Dead Confederates
by goldenmeadow
Summary: Sultry, scary, Southern Gothic. A good ol' vamp with bad intentions, Eddie lives large as ever on the down-low, down South. Always under his skin, Bella's just sass in a frosty glass. **INSPIRED AWARDS WINNER Best Vampires & Best Bella** AU/M
1. New South

**New South**

**UPDATE—06/14/2013:**

*****Hey, y'all! I wanted to tell you about my first novel, which was just released! Also, you can catch up with me at a number of places, I always love hanging out and shooting the breeze, perving, etc., so don't be a stranger *****

_**Sugar Daddy, **_**by Rie Warren**_**:**_

_She needs a job. He wants a mistress. Hearts and contracts are bound to get broken._

Shay Greer is pure GRITS—a Girl Raised In The South–but nowhere near a demure southern belle. She's looking for a way out of her broken down marriage when she lands an unexpected job offer she really should refuse. Position? _Mistress_. Fringe Benefits? _Of course_. Fraternization with sexy CEO Reardon Boone? _Required_.

You can find _Sugar Daddy_ at all ebook retailers! The live links for everything, and how to reach me, are on my ffnet profile ;)

**Connect:**

All live links to everything are on my profile, including links to _Sugar Daddy_:

Website:

Facebook Profile: RieWarren

Facebook Page: RieWarrenRomance

Twitter: RieWrites

**Disclaimer: I own this shit. Rebelward, Confeddie, whatever you wanna' call him, as well as this Em and this Jazz; these boys are totes mine! As for the underlying characters and story of Twilight, y'all know whose copyright that is under and that certainly does not belong to me.**

**And now, may I proudly introduce Rebelward!**

_**Y'all better buckle up, because it's gonna' get bumpy!**_

* * *

_The hell is this?,_ I thought as I read the Moldy News that landed half-assed in my gravel driveway, littered with shotgun shells and Lucky Strike butts, the plastic-wrapped edge dangling into the nearest pothole-filled mud puddle. I splattered out of the house, full of the warm blood from the stinkin' possums I was forced to devour last night. The memory of the grey and white striped fur on their tiny, taunting bodies made me shudder. Fuckin' possums. Hated hitting that shit. I needed some gators, and soon.

Stupid Moultrie News and their dumbass Police Log that practically shouted 'Vampires in Our Midst!' If only these ignorant, self-important snooties would open their bedazzled fuckin' eyes to the truth staring them in the face. What. The. Hell. So what, dead and drained animal carcasses littering the lowcountry, like that was anything new with all the good ol' boys in the vicinity. I skimmed and chortled over the details of dead foxes and the odd, grizzled, black bear body that had recently been discovered. Pshaw. It was another article that beckoned me: We Want Your Guns! Food for Exchange!

I rolled my golden eyes right back into my head; as if that was ever going to happen. This was gun-totin' territory! Why turn in the weapon you could use to hunt your own food, trading it for food? Did anyone else sense the complete, vicious circle of this argument? I friggin' doubted it. No fuckin' matter, there was no way in hell I would ever give up my state of the art, perfectly tuned, and custom-designed bow or my shotgun. Not that I needed them, but they were part and parcel; they defined me as much as my old school Ford Bronco, complete with a faded and torn bumper sticker that read 'You should see my other ride' referring to my Ford F2500HD. The beast that spoiled the shit out of tires that reached Emmett's linebacker shoulders, mud-splattered splash guards revealing the superb silhouette of a buxom woman reclining and jutting her perky tits out, gun rack jauntily stacked across the rear window, truck bed filled with the debris of our scandalous nights.

I was not all that into auto-art, but I had to give credit where thanks were due and toting several well-phrased bumper stickers certainly cast me as one of them. Lining up the sticky plastic just so, I had artistically plastered the tags of American Confederate, No Fear (natch), and Honk if Parts Fall Off to my rear window. On the other hand, Em's ride was clapped out and colored over with a plethora of completely at-odds banners; South Carolina Cracker: Endangered Species, Cat: The Other White Meat, and My Child is a TERRIFIC Kid! – the pillock most definitely did not have a kid–just like a toddler who had gotten his hands on a 99 cent, Dollar General sticker book and run amuck all over Mummy's front parlour. Such a child.

This goddamn recession was ruining my lifestyle. With the downturn, the fucking plummeting of the economy, people became more suspicious, quicker to cast stones, faster to lay blame and search out oddities such as us; we had to be beyond reproach. We Cullens, (Esme, Carlisle, Emmett, Jazz and myself) looked to all intents and purposes like just another humdrum, fair-to-middlin' South Cackalakee clan, but it was a farce that became a reality out of necessity. A ruse to remain under the radar of the Volturi. Forcing our hand to be that much stealthier and inconspicuous. To avoid notice and attention I became ever more devoid of my previous decades of humanity. Humanity! Ha! I barked out a harsh laugh at that thought twinned with my total inhumanity. I was a vampire and no amount of animal blood would ever quell the desire for the thump and throttle of the crimson, hot, corporeal fluid spewing forth from a pierced jugular.

Stupid George Dubya. I'd like to hit that, I might could even lift my embargo against mortals! Scratch that. First I'd get Laura, she looked like a prim and proper tasty little morsel, then I'd probably just kill her jackass (pun intended, I may be a revamped redneck, but I got the brains of the family) of a husband. Dildo. He needed a good head ripping off. I'd seen enough in my time, and contemplated all the ways I could get to the current cunty POTUS as he systematically fucked up the country. But I never did.

In the end, I was too busy buffing my guns, mud running, and sticking my harder than wrought iron hard-on into the swinging door of dripping wet waitresses at Mama Brown's. Mama Brown's Diner and Pie Shop. Yeah, Pie Shop, how very fucking apt.

I might have a lucid profound thought here and there, but Emmett kept me grounded.

At that I eased carefully from the aluminum chair that completed our mish-mashed dining set (foraged from a night of successful dumpster diving) and stalked silently, panther-like, to Emmett's bedroom door. His otherworldly snore rattled the door on its frame and made the plasterboard walls of our scrubby, doublewide trailer creak and groan. His snuffling was a masterpiece of thespianism, making him appear more earthly until it became second nature to pass out and feign sleep, wall-vibrating whistle and all. He played possum like a pro, and yet again my throat smarted against the flavor of those vermin.

_Dickweed needed a wake-up call. I pummeled the shitty ply board door until my fist went straight through and still he snuffled on. The noxious scent of cheap booze swilled through the air as I stepped inside. Leaping from the doorway onto his bed, I ripped the mingin' chenille spread back from his giant's body and shouted with all the unnecessary air in my lungs, "GET THE FUCK UP, ASSHOLE!"_

With a groan, a twitch (by twitch, I mean a shiver that shook the entire house and spread across the swampy ground we were perched on, causing a fissure to glide from porch to dirt road), and a light-hearted curse "Sonofamotherfuckinbitchyoucuntyassmuncherwhore!", Emmett rolled over and eased his aching ochre eyes open.

Unpleased that I'd punched a hole in his crude, crass, bellicose, belligerent brand of bonhomie that made Em the quintessential manifestation of a person in these here parts, he kept up, "You're such a feisty cunt, Edward. Why don't you just get you some good lovin' already?"

Emmett needed a spittoon and I needed a toss-pot for all the jerking-off-induced jizz that flew from my giant beanstalk ten thousand times a day, all to the tune of one fucking impervious, tiny, almost woman-girl. A mere waif. Wastrel. Wasted. A goddamn conundrum of wantonness! Fucking waitress no less.

Dipshit. Fucking Edward. Here and now, I was Eddie Cullen. Not Edward Anthony Masen Cullen, I'd dropped that last bit of my former self by the wayside long ago. Only a stupid-ass, South-of-Broad mama's boy with the last name of Legare would be caught dead sporting the name Edward. He knew better than anyone I wasn't gettin' any good lovin' because of some irritatingly, beautiful brunette at Mama Brown's who was making my balls turn an unsightly shade of blue. Not my style, at all. I wanted to rip her head from her shoulders, spit in her face, slap her ass, suck her empty, and fuck her six ways to Sunday all at the same time.

That was the problem.

I didn't know what I wanted more.

Kill the bitch.

Or fuck the shit out of her. I wanted to gorge myself on her pussy pie, up and down and all around town.

And since that wasn't happening, I power-smacked Emmett upside his scrungy head with all the force of a cement block.

A wheedling whine mocked his behemoth size, "Sumbitch, all right! Eddie!" Before he could even shake his eyes back into place I jumped to the other side of the room, I wasn't stupid. Emmett was twice my size, but not nearly as fast or lithe as me. I just needed to stay one step ahead of him.

"Listen bitch," I muttered, "I might could go for something to eat. Those maggoty possums are hocking back up on me. What the hell were we thinkin'? We are never that desperate, dude. Remember that!"

A sparkling light illuminated Emmett's formerly faux-sleep-hazed eyes. Huntin' and chicks, that's what we lived for. Men. Vampires. What the fuck was the difference really?

"Let's hit The Pig!" he squealed and then snorted; if nothing else Emmett had the gift of animalistic impersonation.

"What the shit for?" I demanded.

"_Them is good huntin' grounds!" _

I swear to fuck, if I rolled my eyes one more time in the space of this thirty minute interlude that was my never-fucking-ending life, I was going to go apeshit and take down every sexy smelling, lusciously perfumed woman in a five mile radius. I needed release, NOW. If he was hell bent on The Pig then Piggly Wiggly it was; the local store had its own abattoir, and the blood promised to be fresh from the slaughter. It was an easy meal ticket, and one that definitely would ease the bitter queasiness from the previous night's shitnanigans. Not to mention the sexy, tight-ass, red-haired girl behind the hot lunch counter who swooned every time Em flexed his brawny biceps in her direction.

I smelled my wifebeater, cringing at the slight stench from the bootleg hooch Emmett forced down my incinerating throat last night before he sicced me onto that Christly possum family. Two minutes later saw me showered and Old Spice soap-on-a-rope smellin'. Dipping into my closet I pulled on fresh clothes care of the laundress talents of Esme, bless her. My hair was a mess, but I did not give a shit. The chicks seemed to like the fact that it looked like I was always sullied from a rollicking roll in the hay; I could read their lewd thoughts and knew, without fail, they thought of their own hands grabbing my stray strands in their little hot fingers, pulling hard for all their worth, until they had my head grasped in a death grip between their legs or to their lips. That was cool with me.

That brought to mind Jasper. My mate, friend, and our other brother. As the newest member of our clan, coven, family, what have you, he had earned himself the nickname of Junior. If he was a girl, with girly-bits, I might have considered him a soul mate. As it was, he had a dick, and he used it most mightily, indiscriminately, and in a very admirable way against all and sundry. Chicks, dicks, hoes, bros; he was the most un-racist, un-sexist un-dead I'd ever met. Me, I was all about pussy. Poontang. Of all of us though, Junior was the master-hunter. I was always amazed he found the time to hone his skills outside of the boudoir.

The only hippie I tolerated, he was all about the Free Love. If it had a hole, he had the pole, and he enjoyed nothing more than dipping it in, bobbing it, and reeling that shit in.

He had his own abode so he could shoot his motherload in some semblance of peace… _If the trailer's a rockin', don't come a-knockin'! _Never was a crass adage more true, and I knew I'd be thankful for that in the days to come.

Eh, Jazz had his coming. A chill skidded over my already icy skin at the thoughts I kept to myself.

As if speaking of the devil himself, Jazz tore through the front door, all unaware grins at another languorous, sunny, spring, lowcountry Saturday. It was just our kind of day with the pea-soup-thick fog. And it was days like this that made me irate every time I sped past the outpost of Sun Stopper Window Tinters, because apparently black windows were a must for every vampire in the southern climes. Just in case we dazzled too much in the lazy sunshine. _What-the-fuck-ever_, I rolled my eyes around in my head one more time, giving myself an unpleasant headachey feeling. The douchebags were so glaringly obvious they might as well hang a neon, flashing sign proclaiming, _'We Serve Vampires Hear'_, typo and all!

Too dazzling in the sun. Fuck that. Dazzling was a pussy word anyway. What were we? Chicks with dicks? Naw. I preferred the phrase "_sweaty sheen"_. My glistening skin only the byproduct of this deliciously hot climate and the alcohol. A little sun never friggin' hurt anyone. I'm a man, therefore I sweat. Fucking deal.

On this day, a dense, misty Saturday at the ending of spring, Jazz wanted to surf.

Em wanted to purloin some platelets from The Pig as aforementioned, and then muff dive. In that order.

And I… I was a goner. Pathetic. A loser. Losing myself.

I was beginning to hate this human world.

I had already started to despise this earthly ceaseless existence, again.

Then I'd met _her_, two weeks ago. And was suddenly wondering where she'd been all my dormant, deadened life.

We-ell, we didn't meet so much as collide, as the fucking clumsy miniscule twit with sienna-glowing, long, wavy, messy, strawberry-scented tresses, perfectly formed globes that pranced about as boobs, and long legs that seemed most unlikely on such a petite frame, raped against my unforgiving, nefarious, nacreous physique. With two choices, let the bitch face plant on my Carhartts or wrap her up against me, I took one whiff of her wrecking-ball blood and deigned not to drop her.

Biggest cunt-ass mistake I'd ever made.

When she'd looked up to me with so much gratitude shining from her warm, doleful, umber, beguiling eyes, smiled with those luscious bee-stung lips, my non-stop thoughts… _stopped._ I couldn't hear a goddamn thing! Not the cacophony around us, not the clinking of ice in glasses, not the clatter of forks on plates, not the chewing and swallowing, and most definitely not the sluice of _her_ thoughts. With her in my arms, I could only read the galump-rush of her heart, blood flooding that organ until it triple-timed, a flush billowing up her pillowy skin.

She had not left my mind since.

I did not want to get attached. Least of all to a human being. A blushing klutz of a pathetic, teeny-weeny, wan-faced, destined-to-die creature. This was a joke. It had to be a lark! My comeuppance for being such a dickhead the last half century at least. Yeah, God was having a grand old heyday with me now! God was taking the piss.

I was an insufferable sonuvabitch; Emmett reminded me daily. And Esme. Christly Emse. With her arctic amber eyes always lingering on me and hoping and wondering and waiting, watching and fucking baiting me to find my 'one true love', my mate. That was twat-talk, and I was not having any of that!

Dick in hand. Teeth bared. Cock-talking, swaggering, drinking, and sinking dick as and when I saw fit, no one had ever touched me. Not even the sibilant succubus that was Tanya. Not brace-face Jessica, not supermodel-wannabe Lauren.

I was Edward Cullen. Vampire first. Hard motherfucker last and foremost. And Eddie Cock-hard Cullen did not wax philosophical! This Bella bitch was twisting up my insides and warping my head, taking me back to the place I _did not_ want to go.

_~~ll~~_

We hadn't always resided here, in Cainhoy, aka Cainwhore. A Podunk town with a population of who-the-fuck-knew and no-one-the-fuck-cared. The numbers were continuously engorged with the influx of inbred legions that came to stay with momma/auntie/sister during hunting season, and fluctuated yet more, with a dip, on account of all the hunting and drunk driving accidents. Those were two things you could rest assured would not happen to a vamp! The hairy, smelly, rancid armpit of the lowcountry, located at the nexus of Daniel Island and Wando, a stone's throw from Awendaw, run-off for the exigent population pushed out of swelling yuppified Mount Pleasant. And those whose ancestors had lived on the same swampy, murky, low-lying, tropical scrub land for generations.

Why were we in South Carolina? It was the perfect hide. The Volturi would look pretty fuckin' conspicuous not to mention ridiculous in these here parts with those poncey cloaks. I could count on one hand the number of Goths residing in our midst, all fake vampire-like. I could make it real for them if they so wished! I called them all Snapes. Having a healthy dedication to all things JK Rowling, what the fuck else was I going to do with unlimited time but read a rousing good YA fantasy? Now, vampire fiction… that had me snorting just like Emmett in hog heaven. And what the hell was with True Blood and the resurgence of vampires as the hottest must-hit-that-shit around? I scorned and sneered, and read and watched. _And_ jeered. Fucking idiotic.

Back to point, the Snapes. There was skinny, tall, scrawny, white-as-the driven-snow–and probably just as bloody pure–Library Snape. Ran into him often at the Mount Pleasant collections. A boy. Nothing more. His thoughts were minutely intriguing though. Pretending nonchalance and unawareness, his heartbeat sped and the tiniest of flushes spread, almost making his pallid skin look healthy whenever a particular MILF entered the library's alarmed doors. I snickered behind my cupped hand to read his less than _pure_ thoughts of what he'd like to do to her, all the while shuffling his black, beaten, size ten Cons and burying his nose into the latest on The Leaky Lounge, utilizing the public's computers to indulge his own obsession instead of looking for a job as he should have been doing. The punk definitely didn't know occlumency as I could clearly discern his thoughts.

Then there was Missus Snape. Statuesque. I saw her in Millennium Records flipping through old vinyl of _The Cure_, _Sisters of Mercy_, _Siouxsie and The Banshees_. A lot. Her dyed, raven hair was coiled like Medusa's and made its way past her tight ass. Clad in onyx leather boots that enclosed her lean legs to her thighs, perched on 6" stilettos she clacked along with assuredness and dignity.

I'd hit that, and not with a wand. Except for the fact that her visions told of dungeons, and torturing the dragons of many a man. Not my style.

This slow-paced, lazy, easy life was a far-cry from what we'd known before in our last citizenship in good old Blighty. Moving was a necessity. An exhausting consequence for those who never aged and a race against the Volturi. We had preferred the northern realms to the flash and metro-trendiness of London and her sister cities; Manchester, Leeds, North Yorkshire and her surrounds. There was Whitby, on the eastern seaside with its fishy foul smell of famed smoked kippers and Whitby Abby, the home of Bram Stoker's _Dracula_. Now, that was a laugh and a half! As if we'd live in a cold, gloomy, stony relic! What. The. Hell. As if a mere stake to the heart would cause our demise…if that were the case I'd have done the deed long ago. Muted and sobered and deadened and despairing over this non half-life. I became a miserable git.

The North Yorkshire moors and Herriot's _All Creatures Great and Small_. We were great, and they were small. And not all that tasty. I'd had my fill of sheep, and cow, and was more than ready to hit a more exotic region. All I could think was thank fuck we'd departed that dour territory before the reign of BSE. The plebs knew it as Mad Cow Disease. No shitting wonder Alistair was half off his rocker with worry and angst. The guy was a timid, mousy freak of nature, and that was saying a lot for our kind. If it wasn't BSE, it was Hoof and Mouth with the sheep getting wiped out left, right, and center. Stupid mute mammals. They didn't have a chance against our superior strength, cunning and skill.

Yes, the doom and gloom of England suited us just fine for a very long time. The relics, the ruins, Gothic and Victorian, centuries-old and knowing the endless revolutions of the sun. But even that became stale and moribund. After too many decades of wary, somber, anxious, depressed attitudes, enough was enough!

Life had been mundane, trivial, tedious, and insipid. A repetitious nightmare of _unending_ days.

That all changed when we moved to Cainwhore, eschewing the dreary dull scrim of the Northwestern states. Incongruous with all of our previous incarnations, Esme, Carlisle, Em, and myself welcomed this live-life-to-the-fullest, free wheelin' existence. None more than Em and myself. There was much to be said for acting first and thinking… _never_. Especially to me. Having been anesthetized, immobilized by over a century of being beaten by the heedless thoughts of others, having to run from the Volturi, remaining one step ahead of them, worried for my family much more than for my own safety. I felt protected here. Those denizens of ether, those Italian monsters, and the mafia of the vampire world at large had been after me since Carlisle sired me. My formidable skills called to their egomaniacal need to have every superior supernatural being beneath their scaly, paper-thin thumbs. Yeah, they craved to get their long-taloned, gauzily-fleshed fingers on me and into my mind, who didn't? Aro, Caius, and Marcus, the triad of evil wanted to enslave me.

I was nobody's bitch, I didn't give a toss if they were vampire royalty or not!

Their unyielding searching led us to this place. Impelled us to artistry in our latest, greatest worldly act. Adept, blending in with the scenery, I inhabited this boyhood, this cusp of manhood completely. Unable to even remember through the murk of my long lost memories to my own childhood, I embraced this juvenile masculinity and became a purely physical being! With Em and Jazz at my side, good ole' boys.

I used to be full of piss and vinegar, now I was broiling with vim and vigor!

Life had transformed upon our immigration to stateside. And was ordained to be altered once again with the advent of Bella.

_~~ll~~_

The trip to The Pig to fill up on bovine blood was followed by my decisive behest to git ourselves to Mama Brown's. I was testy as a bear and needed to lay my eyes, if not my hands, on Bella. My testes were seething with venom at the smallest thought of her. The drive was nothing for us, cruising along 17 at breakneck speeds, spilling onto Chuck Dawley Boulevard and over Coleman with our windows rolled down, piping out AC/DC's _Back in Black_, hooting and hollering and screeching to a halt on the scree of gravel that made up the parking lot. Just before the Ben Sawyer Boulevard rose to the turnstile bridge that dumped fishermen, snobby credit card living cunts, and crunchies alike into the seaside haven of Sullivan's Island. The ospreys nesting on the manmade platforms over the intra-coastal waterway took flight at our savage approach.

Ditching us back at the trailer, Jazz had taken his leave for a date with coochie. I couldn't blame him. Biting my tongue I called out a less-than-genuine farewell when I really wanted to shove his face in the penultimate preposterous person who was about to rock his pussy-filled world inside out.

Ever attuned to the emotional fanfare around him, Jazz caught whiff of something other than snatch, and that was my mendaciousness. Scrolling through my reeling emotions that spread through sick, amused jibing to anxious, lip-gnawing, unyielding, gut-clenching fear, he scathed me with a perplexed look from his burnished amber eyes, and I heard his thoughts, _What the fuck is going on with you lately, man?_

Caustically, I shrugged and dipped my head. Willed the worry away. Refused to meet his gaze. I had never held such a secret before, and could not even understand the reason myself for such refusal to 'fess up. Hoping he'd chalk it up to the chestnut-tressed, human, trussed waitress I was fucking _craving_ to encounter today.

Slamming the trashed trailer door that had seen too many debaucherous Cullen nights, with its shredded screen slightly soothed back into place beneath torn silver lengths of duct tape, so that it banged back and forth whining with a rusty scream, _the kid needed to control his own emotions, never-the-fuck-mind about mine!_, Jazz was still suspicious, but too intent on cocking off to bother me further.

Disembarking in the deep gravel of the parking lot, in front of the ramshackle run-down hole-in-the-wall joint that was battered and beaten as the populace that frequented it, I nimbly jumped out and inspected my appearance in the sparkling reflection of the window. My wrinkled, chamois, button-down shirt decidedly unbuttoned. Sleeves hastily rolled up over the defined slopes of my forearms, the sinews of my chest a craggy landscape of toned stone flesh. Below, my stomach muscles were unmoving, packed with pure power and snare-drum-taut above the low-rise faded jeans held in check at my narrow hips with a tooled leather belt, the buckle of which gleamed with meticulous care. I raked my strong un-calloused fingers through my hair that looked as if it'd just been through a wrestling match with Em, or had recently escaped the clutches of one woman or another, _or two or three at a time_.

A sardonic grin tried folding over a nauseating new nervousness. No fucking doubt my body could play out all of Bella's fantasies. But what of my nonexistent heart? My frigid, other-worldly being?

Fuck. Off.

I opted for the panty-dropping crooked smile instead and deemed myself ready… to meet my own destiny. Or my death. Or another meeting with a raging case of an egregious erection of epic proportions. _Same fucking thing_.

End this.

Pulling myself together, I struck the dirt off my shitkickers against the tires of the truck and straightened my shoulders.

Just inside the door emblazoned with _Mama Brown's, Better than Downtown's_, Emmett slid to a nearby table and proceeded to make a scene as soon as we were seated, hollering out to Rose, "Hey, Betty, come serve over here!" The pugnacious pudwhacker really did think he was living in the New South. Sporting a threadbare green t-shirt with the motto _I Don't Need a John Deere to Pull Hoes_, he was trying to channel Bubba Sparxxx. Even though I rolled my eyes until they were sore with the revolution, I had to admit he made a pretty decent impression. Good thing the yocals were used to us, and we were very nearly able to pass off as their own kith and kin.

Rose was a professional. She'd been here long before us and had been none too happy at sharing this refuge with a many-numbered kinfolk.

All gum-smacking and smoky-voiced drawling, "Honey, sugar, baby," charming the grizzled elders, the sweet-tempered dawdling old ladies, the wet-behind-the-ears young'uns alike. Until she got to us, every damn day and twice on Sunday.

Rose was not at all pleased as she came prancing over to slam our usual bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon, affectionately known as Pabst Blue Blood, on the creaky three-legged table that tottered beneath her unnecessary might. Apparently we deserved no greeting.

Getting liquored up was just another way of blending in with the scenery, and a method we found much enjoyment in, to our amazed amusement. These southerners enjoyed their drink just as much as the English; both breeds were complete lushes who found it necessary to repent their lavish ways beneath the punishing dome of Christianity come the Lord's Day. We'd developed a taste for it, quite simply, out of boredom. Living in the incessant gloomy climes of Britain, what the hell else was there to do? Em and I began our explorations with single malt whiskey; he had a fondness for the peaty, tawny, thick liquid of Laphroaig while I preferred the oak casket coarseness of Highland Park and other of the Orkney's offerings.

Even Esme and Carlisle broke with tradition and took our lead with red wine, the most dense and like blood, although Esme found that a vodka tonic or four perfectly complemented the sweltering summer nights. Rose was already a hard drinker when we met her; cheap pitchers of beer, cheap bitch. She was right up Emmett's alley.

Taking some getting used to, the inferno-burn scraping down my gullet and roiling in an unusual swish about my stomach was well worth it. Crawling out of the tumbler, tankard, Mickey's Wide Mouth, undulating ferociously and only finding release from our bodies in the dappling arch of the diamond-encrusted gleam that rebounded off of our prism-like flesh. Finally we found a use for the 70's disco-ball refractions of our tissue! It wasn't just all about _Staying Alive_; Travolta could kiss the hard pristine ageless musculature of my seventeen-year-old glutes.

The way the alcohol permeated my being allowed a pseudo-slumber and inert senses and desensitization. A slip-hole. Less feeling, less hearing. Muted. It made us more likeable and less suspect.

Fucking Pabst Blue Ribbon. Blue Blood was the best. Townies left a bad taste. I'd gone there once. Slipping up and supping where I shouldn't have. We were on a strict diet of non-homo-sapien shite. Diabolical and predatory, and accursed. Cursed with senseless killing gifts coupled with a Carlisle-gifted conscious. Sometimes I hated that bastard; my father, my mentor, my maker. He who had stolen me from life on earth, eternity in heaven and instead gave me ceaseless survival at my mother's request.

I'd once had a LaCoste wearing, seersucker-suited King; he lived South of Broad. Dude wouldn't have known ass-up from a real broad. Foppy fucking prince. Tasted divine though, but not nearly as splendidly as _his_ broad whom I inveigled with just a shallow exhalation of my saccharine breath upon her collagen-fluffed lips. Now, _she_ was the Queen and no refuting that. I ate her out before I bit her clit while she threw herself back in ecstasy. It was so easy to suck every last drop of hoity-toity blood out of her as she dropped into her cum-face glaze. Didn't even know what had hit her, besides my boner of beatific, Da Vinci's _Vitruvian Man's_ proportions.

Booze, broads, and blood. Embroiled in a fractured subsistence. Not even seeking completion anymore. What could be said of our predilection for alcohol was also true of our prurient penchant for pussy of the populace; took some getting used to but merited the neck craning, back breaking, cock-jarring discharge. And there simply wasn't enough vampire vadge to go around. Restraining the need for blood, crushing the monumental capacity that made us want to rip through flesh and bone and tissue to veins during orgasm… no doubt it was easier to go at it full throttle with a mate of our own making, but it was that much less of a thrill and held no bragging rights. Mortal women were much more gracious, especially sweet talkin' G-R-I-T-S, and I was not talkin' about the ecru-colored, limp, watery, grainy foodstuff either. I was all about Girls Raised in the South and I could nail and rail them for days on end! Giving new meaning to Southern Comfort, these gentile ladies were most thankful. Demure and hot, sweet and wild, it boggled the mind that the men they were used to could not get their heads around the idea of a _slow_, long, _hard_ fuck. What was the fuckin' cuntnundrum?

On partaking of real blood in the very rare instance and parlaying before the splayed legs of fragile women on a nightly basis, I let it all ride. I didn't have a Christ complex, crucifixion wouldn't kill me anyway. What was the point of guilt when you could sin at will, love _forever_ and feel _nothing_? Fucking enlivened me, booze deadened me. They were my own personal brand of uppers and downers.

Salvation? That was for mortals and whackjobs.

For the here and now, in Mama Brown's I was all about salivating and slavering over Bella. And I'd yet to hear her skipping little heartbeat.

In Bella's stead, Rose strode about the room that was lit by pathetic Tiffany-style reproductions caked in soot, sticky expectorate, and holding the skeletal see-through wings and desiccated bodies of moths and flies in the plasti-glass pseudo-leaded bowls. Hot and haughty, primitive and regal, this statuesque vampire waitressed the shit outta' Mama Brown's and scooped up dollar bills like a stripper working a pole, when all she did was serve coffee, cold lager, steaming apple pie with a swish of her sinuous hips. This cock and twat tease, verbally sparring and physically fisting each other between her and Emmett was getting goddamn old. I wished they'd just fuck already.

Bouncing the black, round tray against her unbreakable hip, sticking her tongue out at Chief Mother-Fuck Charlie Swan behind his back, and then sliding her sub-zero fingers up his arm so that he twitched and tilted in his aluminum, beer-sticky chair, Rose deigned to make another pass at us, knowing full well that even though we wished to order no food, Em would soon cause another ruckus if she didn't make an appearance.

Gleefully, I watched the theater of Rose and Emmett unfold. Nearly tearing up the cracked, off-kilter, yellowed linoleum and on the warpath, her honey-blond high ponytail swaying in a long, thick, rope-like braid, Rose could definitely give Em a run for his money.

Halting before Emmett, hands on perfect hips, hopping from foot-to-foot in a perfect imitation of the frailer race, "I swear to all that is unholy, Emmett, if you call me Betty one more time, I'll rip your cock off and feed it to the hogs out back!" As if they heard that siren's temptation, those very pigs tussled against the rear door of the diner and squealed vigorously! Poor sad piggies, little did they know that they were being fed-up for the next pork-pulling. A good old spit-roasting was nigh in their futures.

I leant back on the rear legs of my chair and smirked at her audacity. Nuthin' better than a little showdown to break up the monotony of my day!

A raging bitch with killing instincts, Rose continued with a sneer that smacked of superiority, "First of all, asshole, every time you call me Betty I am bombarded with images of_ Ugly fucking Betty_! And if _that's_ what you think of me, then _this_," she reached forward lightning fast and tugged hard on Emmett's dick… we both flinched, "And this," Rose stood straight up, model tall and proud to cup her denim-clothed crotch through the tiny, frayed, worn cut-offs that were a Mama's prerequisite, _Thank you, Mama Brown!_, so that me, Em, and every other man in the joint groaned collectively and loudly until Emmett cut us all off with a harsh growl, leaning forward to catch her next words, "Will never fucking meet, _Bubba_!" She sneered and swayed away.

Emmett massaged his abused meat, _I imagined it as road kill under Rose's vice-like grip_, and smiled goofily. His thoughts: _Aaaah, hope springs eternal_. Fucking Emmett, the undead woman of his dreams had just threatened his family jewels, and he thought she was proposing marriage!

Jumping from his tiny seat so that it toppled over, Emmett raced up behind the retreating Rose and grabbed for her ass. Dickhead was truly asking for trouble! Swiveling around before he even made contact, Rose cuffed him hard across his ear, "Fuckin' swine!"

Emmett guffawed his way back to our table. All jaunty and satisfied, sighing, "She sure is purty." As if that bit of repartee was the stuff his wet non-dreams were made of. Caveman clearly thought he was still in the Paleolithic era.

"Way to go, _Bubba_," I muttered with a smirk. That rapidly disintegrated as the longed-for sound and tripping tempo of light soles I'd been awaiting for approached the table next to us.

My palms would have been sweating were there anything other than toxin coursing through me. All that poison did was jet down to my cock and harden me instantly. My non-beating heart would have pounded. My head did spin. And I still could not hear a word within hers. Bracing myself, struggling to maintain my composure all the while decomposing, I lifted my eyes first over slim feet in worn flip-flops, creamy calves and battered knees and plush thighs. Curvy hips and a waist that would easily be encased within my hands. Up her ribs, over her round, high, not-too-big tits. That neck–_that fucking neck!_–that I wanted to lick and stroke up and down… I swallowed a throat full of poison! Her face was turned towards me even while she set down steaming bowls of Beaufort Stew, in front of the truck drivers. Beaufort Spew, the lowcountry's favorite delicacy, was filled with smoked sausage, pink shrimp, corn on the cob and baby potatoes and was enough to make me shudder. As if simple fare itself was not repulsive enough.

Shivering with Bella's proximity, the heat of which propelled over the untouchable, previously unreachable plains of my snowy being, I tuned out the licentious thoughts of the disgustingly unkempt, beer-bellied, truck-skunk-skanks so I could tune into _her._ Pouty lips trembling into a smile, revealing perfect, tiny, pearly whites. Suck-me, full-sized, glossy, fruity, bitten-red lips that I wanted to suck on. Then up to her eyes. Opened, widened, unblinking, staring, wondering, with a tinge of terror. _Good, she needed to be scared of me!_ Toasty fucking Bambi-brown with flecks of shimmering gold and a hint of ebullience. How those delectable orbs would heat up and melt while I fucked her, first softly and then hard! Dazzling this Miss Bella, entrenching her in my gaze, holding her still, reading only her pounding heart that fluttered the flimsy, filmy, white short-sleeved blouse that taunted my wanting-to-tear hands, I sped again to her mouth and slowly licked my own lips, watching the gasp and gathering of tiny beads of sweat that trickled down her neck and into the slight swells of her cleavage.

That, my brother, is how you trap your prey.

Hours later, minutes and seconds that had crawled by with tortoise-like, torturous, infinitesimal slowness, surrounded by more minutiae of creating the reenactment of a life, Emmett, myself and Jazz were back at the house. No more than a look and entangled feeling of lust had passed between me and Bella. No words spoken. No thoughts divined. No one else understood the depravity and longing this witchy woman entangled about me. And nobody knew that she alone held a fortress of her mind, barbed and barren against my omniscient talents.

That I had observed Bella, heard her voice, seen her trip and traipse and flail with all of her awkwardness that met grace and substantial sensuality, and still had not said two words to her, rankled me. Painted me as a pussy. A sadomasochistic voyeur. A sucker. A bloodsucker. A sick motherfucker. Her Circe's blood was less tempting, her minge much more so. And the secreted wanderings of her mind that were suggested at through the shuffle of effervescence and dimness of her dolorous eyes mocked me. Talked to me silently. Called my name. Would not allow me my previous imperviousness.

This was but the end of an interminable day for the people we surrounded ourselves with, and just the beginning of our infinite nighttime.

As Dylan said, _the times they were a-changing, _and not solely because of Bella. I continued to hold my cards close to my chest, not breathing a word of this upcoming upheaval to Jazz. I'd sensed _her_ and she'd seen _us_. In our stagnant cesspool, inhabiting this stifling trailer on the edge of the snake infested swamp. Waiting. Watching. Biding her time. Jazz in her sights.

_Alice._

A time of reckoning was near. The winds were blowing from a different direction.

Stale and unmoving, immobile for too many decades, we were about to experience something I was not prepared for. Had I possessed one drop of civilized feeling I would have been scared. I should have been.

I shook these unbidden thoughts from my mind and focused on the now. I was good at that. At _this._ We were off to trailblaze the forest and hunt the creatures of the night. Good ol' boys with good ol' toys!

"Don't forget to cut out the lights," I hollered.

"When the fuck'd you get so concerned about the electric bill?"

"Everyone should be concerned about the wasting of our world's finite resources, Bubba."


	2. Varsity Vampires

**Varsity Vampires**

**A/N:**

V, beta beautiful and the inventor of the phrase _permagasm_, love it, LOVE YOU! And thanks for filling in my, er, _holes._

To the best fucking thread babes a girl could ever have…MWAH! And Tosh, you chillax bitch, EOF. I just had to!

BellastJerne, I was beyond thrilled to see you again, even more so at your comparison of DC's to Austen's social commentary, color me a puddle of goo!

Tracey, Mepkin Abbey, 'nuff said!

Thanks for all of the magnificent reviews and keep 'em coming!

Disclaimer: Yeah, I own White-trashward (thank you Hitomi) and his delicious brothers as well as the shitnanigans they get up to. But SM owns Twilight.

* * *

Another uncommonly blustery, end-of-Spring day found me at that atrocity of academia that housed all the tweenagers, the adolescent, prepubescent folds. Fucking human race needed to cease and desist with the breeding already. Condoms, you obscenely fertile fuckwads, they really do work!

Wando High School.

I hated this multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art shithole. There was only one reason for me to be here, and since Em, Jazz and I had finally accomplished getting the boot to the ass, permanently, it wasn't for the mind stultifying stuttering that called itself teaching.

The clouds were thick and lowing, glowing with the threat of storm but withholding the gales of rain and gashes of lightning. Wind raced sideways, licking the duck-yellow slicker that Bella wore as she cautiously dismounted the cab of her rusted-out old Chevy whose motor refused to quit rumbling though she'd removed the keys a good thirty seconds before.

Slight spatters of imperfect rain flew down halfheartedly, making me wish for torrents to lash out with Bella clothed in little more than one of my white Hanes t-shirts. As it was, her hushpuppies in the glossy thin plastic were faultlessly outlined. Cool blasts of air took hold of her nipples and made them into hard peaks that wanted to poke through the fabric. Straining to see through the crowds, I narrowed my golden eyes and was maddened, annoyed that I had taken to following her like a stag on the scent and wanting to rut. It frustrated me that for all my superhuman abilities, fucking Beelzebub or whoever had pretty much only left out x-ray vision. I was angered by the kids jostling into her and alternately hiding her and then revealing her to my starved sight.

Sauntering stealthily to the front of my pick-up, faking attention to a screw that I loosened and then tightened on the license plate that read _Ass Kickin' Southern Rock_, I looked up to see Bella pushed along to the entrance. Her loosened hair had dampened and was swaying like the poisonously flowered oleander. Straightening, I pointed and peaked the bill of my camo cap, _as if I needed camouflage!_, and lingered over her retreating feeble frame that was held at bay by the bracing horde around her.

I wanted to barnstorm her beatific body with my pointed ice floe of a tongue, packed full of lies; my unyielding craving to fuck her body was severe and unpleasant. I needed to plow right up her buttermilk,rich thighs. I ached to burrow in her furrows and stake land ownership and never leave residence. My hands fisted with equal parts fury and lust and some other need for repentance…approval.

Cainwhore, the lowcountry, the tri-cunties. This was the first place I'd ever felt some semblance of peace. I'd never been accepted, that was to be expected. Even with my paranormal ability to read minds that should have made this measly worthless existence easier; it only made life worse. An oddball, a reluctant rebel even among my own horrific kind. A misfit whose miserable skills were chased by the changeless empire of the Volturi.

I couldn't have her. Would never touch her. She could never know what I was. And I needed to goddamned stop thinking about Bella!

Hardening myself, I had evolved, or maybe devolved, from the sensitive, do-right, do-good, goody-two-shoes into this metamorphosed monster. Now it came back not in a colorful slipstream wash, but by gradual declines that diced, sliced, slay, and flayed me. Addled and rattled. Like a diamondback, slithering up through the ooze of a century's worth of self-loathing turned revelrous, dirty, rotten ribaldry that I had lost two decades to, and enjoyed!

I was presently sinking back into that drowning feeling of pestilence, beleaguered. It was worse than the scourge of the bubonic plague, the Black Death, that waster of gentry and peasants alike!

Appalled. By myself. _Again_. Alone.

Torn, shorn, ripped and shredded. I had a disease of the soul, a disease of something that I did not even possess.

I tried to suffocate the witless, withering, dithering waffling of the whores and cheerleaders, potsmokers, tokers and bong-brandishing boys, and JV-jacket-toting throng. The masses, en-massed, were causing an indistinct watery picture of Bella that pissed me off! Mike squishy-fuck-face Newton was all over her like white on rice, all porcine, myopic, milky-blue squinty eyes. A perfect reanimation of Newt goddamned Gingrich, this bitch was a Republican right down to his momma-bought Topsiders. No doubt the Missus Newton ironed his rugbies and pinstripes each night and laid his boxers and socks for his morning wakeup call of bacon and eggs and OJ all prepared with a loving touch, inhabiting the time warp of Leave it to Beaver. No fucking way was he getting near Bella's beaver with his scummy meat cleaver!

I preferred commando myself. Easy in, easy out. I sniggered, briefly. But held my smug smirk in check when I remembered, latently, that Esme did my laundry too.

Tyler, Ben, Angela, Lauren, and Jessica. I watched and prowled. The boys were beholden; the girls were fake smiles galore. Threatened piss-ant bitches. Compared to earthy, earthly Bella, the snipey snarky hoors were caked up with make-up and looked like androgynous, plasticine Data from Star Trek.

With an effort at self-control, I drew the line at loitering and lurking outside her house. Though I followed her once, I knew my way around and Chief Swan's place was on my nightly cruise, playing chicken up and down the street just to piss him off and see him come out to the dimly lit rotting front porch, badge on chest, freshly loaded shotgun in hand, 70's style pornstar moustache twitching. Good thing they lived inland because that clapboard wreck of a house would not have withstood the mighty gusts of Tropical Storm Gaston, let alone the devastating destruction of Hugo. Bella's decadent splendor was at odds with the rundown abode that enveloped her nighttime secrets.

With the self-torture, morbid guilt, anxiety - _fuck no! -_ I sought my inner sanctum, my coolness, my jaded well-gauged steadiness. I pleaded with the thoughts to stop, needing to return to my Nothing Never Ever Again Land, sedated not only inside but out. Life that would not die was so much easier that way.

Scratching, scathing, pulling, yanking my hair, that mess of a mop atop my head that for some reason or another had the women and girls mopping the _flaws_ with their panties and literally dying to feel my girth winding in and weaving out, I tried to lasso my thoughts and free Bella from the corral of my ever-tightening crotch.

I was choosy, but promiscuous as hell. How often had I heard Emmett proclaim, "Don't bogart all the pussy, man!" Had to say there was a fair bit of lively game with gorgeous gams and tits in these surrounds. Whether it was the five months out of the year spent at the beach or half-dressed in flowing sundresses to beat the heat, or the simple, swaggering, sultry climate that convinced these bitches to tone up and keep in shape, it was a vast improvement over the diet of lardish, chippie-devouring ladies in the UK**. **

Did I ever deign to fuck the peeny-weeny laypeople, the girls at Wando who wanted to get laid by yours truly, who would be most fortunate for a taste of my dick? Did I lessen myself and lower myself between their precious thighs, their young breasts jutting so high and bouncy, nipples jaunty and most of them bought on daddy's dime c/o East Cooper Cosmetic Surgery? Did I? _Fuck._ Nah. Beneath me, yet too silly and needy to actually _be_ beneath me.

They hated me. They wanted me. From the moment we three kings rocked into the atrium-roofed foyer of Wando High, I was crushed beneath a surge of lustful thoughts and scandalous images starring myself. Nothing more than nauseating.

High school. What a fucking joke of the most extreme measures. Larcenous and truant for the most part, we'd sort of done our time in light of the fact that the schooling of three hardcore vampire men was never a good idea. We were smarter, inevitably so, than the teachers, played harder than the numbnuts on the varsity field, we never fit in and we fuckin' hated having to try.

Banner, the skank of a Biology teacher, was full of bollocks.

Mrs. Cope, office bitch numero uno, always pictured me giving her cunnilingus. As Fucking If.

Coach Clapp, we-ell, he really _did _have The Clap! And he was an equal opps player of gym class heroes which was just so very wrong.

Mr. Mason was all nasally and non-understanding of such things as Heathcliff. I had personally pulled a _Heathcliff_ many a-times when fucking a broad that was less than all that…a simple turning of one's head to the side and imagining someone else in her stead was all it took to make oneself as unfeeling and uncaring as that cuntish character! Now if it was _my _Isabella, _Isabella Swan_, to be fucking sure I would _not_ be looking askance!

Mr. Jefferson taught Government. Har bloody har har har. Did he think that just by toting the name of one or the US's founding fathers he could glide by in galling ignorance? I wanted to brandish the Declaration of Independence upside his abysmal head.

Mr. Varner was all things Trig. Or so he wished. He wouldn't know an inverse function if it came up and took a bite out of his gangrenous penis.

And Mrs. Goff. Ahhh, Senorita Goff. She was all about the dark Spanish gothicness of Velazquez and verb conjugations and a wet mess every time I addressed her in my perfect accent. Bitch, I had lived in Barcelona...eat it!

My language was now a thick-glassed jam jar stuffed with _sho'nuff_ and _ah reckon, _replacing my clipped turn of the last century verbiage with a slow southern drawl that was just as pleasing to the aural senses as my tongue, in its other _oral_ uses, was pleasing to the tactile senses. Replicating the slurry of slang, I was just as likely to say _dog gonnit _and _dag gummit_ -- Emmett's all-time favorite idioms, being the idiot he was -- as I was to say fuck's sake and arse, gobshite, and git.

A low riding, half car/half pickup, a clapped out, tricked out, Honda hybrid of the owner's own making roared into the lot and slapped me out of my five seconds of pointless meandering. Barreling up, the muted gore of bass pounded from speakers hidden from sight. Out hopped a monolithic boy-man, his chest a tough casket closing the throbbing pulpy slop of his heart that I wanted to forage into, just for fiendish fun.

One look and I hated him in all his burnt sienna-skinned glory, his long straight jet locks. A native.

Two sniffs and I wanted to kill him. A Creole. The very worst kind of voodoo monster. Fuck chlorofluorocarbons, this beast's reek alone was single-handedly causing a gaping hole in the ozone! My nose threatened collapse from the pungent odor of wolf even yards away stock still in my stake-out stance.

As if to emphasize his canine nature, his ride completely screamed _Wolf Mobile_! Apparently subtlety was not in this brutish mutt's repertoire. It was a blight against all things automobile, a true chop shop _Pimp My Ride_ style shock horror to the eyes. Immaculately morphed together, the growling heap melted from maroon to pitch black with running lights flickering across the rear bumper and side rails. Dual exhaust, low slung, and then the fuckin' piece de resistance: a detailed decal pasted onto the back window that showcased two wolves, one grey and one russet colored, baying at the moon against a swirling cloudy night sky.

_FOCKING SHIT!_

At that precise moment, the windswept parched clouds parted, Bella became clear and impeccably in perspective, an image caught within the illuminated frame of a camera obscura. Unobscured. Rays of the sun swallowed and imbued her as if from within and I thought she was smiling at me; I was dazzled by the glee that widened the crimson red of her mouth.

Then, fucking beaten beneath a rapacious rusty pain such as I'd never known before, as my finely tuned hearing adjusted to her joyful exclamation, "JACOB!" Running, tripping and finally _hugging_ the colossus-like cur who wrapped up all of her fragility in a tight grip that I feared would crack her marrow-ridden ribs! _Had she no fucking fear?_

_Jacob_, aka Wolfboy, towered over Bella and crushed her harder to him and the split-second silent tableau reminded me of nothing more than one of Goya's demented paintings from his Black Period.

He was gargantuan and my immediate impulse beckoned me to hideous acts of stark-raving mad, raunchy decimation. Razor sharp, my incisors itched to rip into his jugular and his polished alloy wheels simultaneously.

And what the fuck was it with Bella and her magnetism to all beings supernatural? This was getting very fucking old, very fucking fast!

Fuck this, I was 'bout to spit nickels! I kicked the rocks at my feet so that they flew like shrapnel and shredded and embedded into the breeze block of the school. No motherfuckin' way was I going to stick around to watch this reunion that galled me and filled me with as much bile as venom.

On returning home from decidedly disgusting scene of Bella wrapped around donkey breath Jacob, having peeled out and tried to unstick myself from the oppressive ochre yellow flypaper that kept bringing me back to Bella time and again, I tore up the rotten boards of the steps and careened onto the scratchy old moth-nibbled sofa that dominated mine and Emmett's porch. Its lax softness spilled from manifold tears in the dusty moldy fabric and the ancient iron springs winced at my dead weight.

I was afforded a bird's eye view of our monstrosity of a grill. The crushing stainless steel mass of it threatened as ever to thrust straight through the warped, rough, maggoty planks. Never once had we lit it up for a good grillin', but its pristine den stored our supplies of Colt 45.

The ice chest that sat next to it, white and frosty just like me, hummed into activity, cooling the coagulating packets of blood that Carlisle dropped off twice weekly. Inhabiting our second, third or fourth childhood, with Esme all _Southern Living_ and _tsk tsking_, trying to redecorate or, more to the point, demolish our keep with one lift of her hand so she could start afresh with Rainbow Row tones of salmon, baby blue, and beige. Her sighs about gingham and Country Kitchen and Cracker Barrel had Emmett shaking his head, "Over my dead body!" and shit-for-brains grinned at his own smart ass comment until Esme twisted his ear, stood on tiptoes up to his face and uttered, "You hush up now, you hear!"

Surrounded by the trappings of a human life that hid our vicious vampire natures, I felt inured.

And then I heard a ribald belly laugh coupled with the faintest tinkling of keys on my precious, pitch-perfect, Yamaha U5 upright piano that stole half the walking space in our scummed out living room. The wonky windows were open and Bubba knew I'd returned.

I was so not in the mood. If I was a human being, I'd have been debilitated by a migraine at this point, so the shrill workings of Em's meaty fingers beginning to pound on the keys just sent me over the edge!

I swallowed a growl and leapt up from my resting spot, restored to rage. Hearing my footsteps on the crossroads of the threshold, Emmett switched track and picked up a livelier tune.

My throat clamped down on the groan that followed Emmett's flying fingers tempting out the guttural scrawl of Jerry Lee Lewis's _Great Balls of Fire_.

Bastard fucking knew exactly where I'd been and could surely fathom what went down. He was goading me about the dastardly un-fuckin'-released state of my balls. _Great Balls of Fire._ Fucking fantastic. Nervy, a stud horse un-bedded, feeling, _Mary Mother of Christ_, wet behind the ears! My appetite had been whet and then de-fuckin'-nied!

Stomping to the precipice of tacky carpet that rifled up under my fucking piano, I had to admit, _slightly_, that Em was actually giving a fairly decent rendition considering his expertise only went as far as music sheets laid out in A, B, C, D, etc. as opposed to actual notes!

Douchebag must have been practicing and saving this shit up.

As I loped closer I took in the wet rings on the hard wooden casing, cuntfucker knew better than to place his bottle of brew on my baby's bare back!

Not one bit daunted, Em broke through the broil of sundering music, "Eddie! I thought you could do with a good old rabble rousing hootenanny!"

That alone caused the smallest crooked smile and warranted a trademark Eddie eye roll.

Keeping up his ribbing, he continued, "Enough with your sensitive, effeminate, limp-wrested piano playing tendencies already!"

Hesitating for just a second I cracked him in his butcher's block ribs and shoved him off the bench that was now imprinted with the heft of his cold hard ass. Looming over his spastically laughing form that had landed in the corner, my voice lowered to a chilly calm promise of retribution, "Shut yer fuckin' piehole. Just you fucking wait, _Rose's bitch_, your time is coming." That goddamned caused a cessation of the froth of laughter that filled him.

Psyching him out with a lunge and upraised hand that had his eyes widened, I easily lifted up my maligned baby and moved her to my room for safe keeping. I damn near took the lid off its brass plate hinges as I slammed it shut. As if I wasn't fucking cunt-metized enough by Bella, now there was _Jacob. _His name in my head came out as a girlish squeak, echoing Bella's intonation.

I turned up the volume on my state-of-the-art stereo equipment and submerged myself in rampant rock tunes instead of fucking myself further into a void of no return.

2008 was my favorite fucking rock year of all time! With new blistering albums from Guns n' Roses, AC/DC, and Metallica, I was nearly creaming in my jeans during Rocktober! It almost rivaled the hardcore 80's; Tesla, Whitesnake, Quiet Riot, Alice Cooper, Megadeath – _if only they knew--_ and the ilk, man I missed those days!

Live and Let Die. _Indeed._

Who would have guessed such a thing possible, in this, the annum of fucking hippy-dippy mulish fucks growing their 'far out' pube-like beards. Cuntishly playing fairy acoustic guitars, why didn't they just break out the harps and lutes already? Fucking Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, My Morning Jacket. Made me want to hurl the empty contents of my stomach. I could just take them all down with my mercenary murderous wrath that had not been fully exercised for far too long. Would it really count against me since they looked like animals? Lord knew they had enough fur! And I would be doing the music world an enormous favor!

Deeply tangled in the screech of electric guitars and attempting to dispel the wan, ghostly images of a drenched Bella entrenched in Jacob, hours later Emmett busted into my room, looking nothing less than a caged Yukon bear that had had enough of the staring and jibing at a zoo that had seen better days. A frenzy I'd never witnessed in him before about near shook the double wide down to the cement blocks; it rocked like a galleon heaving on a stormy wave-crashing sea.

Recognizing that he had no filter for his actions or verbal spewage, a rankled Emmett had legged it home before his desire for another's death impelled him to deeds that would be inexcusable in our insular world.

An upstart in need of deliverance, no longer the loafing jester, Emmett ground out, all of his sinewy strength hardly held in check, "Eddie, get me the fuck out of this place, NOW!" His blade-like teeth were bared and his eyes were a troubled-over mix of devilry and dire need.

Shoring Bubba up and shouldering him into the Bronco, I knew exactly where I was gonna' take him.

Moncks Corner, now _that_ place always gave me hearty chuckle. While we churned out mud from the waist-high, chained tires of our monster trucks all over the beautifully landscaped and manicured lawns across the pyramidal Arthur Ravenel, Jr. bridge, we desecrated the glinty, white-painted pavilion that sat square and center at White Point Gardens along the battery. I was throat-full of chuckles about the dichotomy of the Trappists at Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner and the uppercrust that were horrified by our rampant fucking upon the staging of the White Point's gazebo.

I rushed us to the secluded realms of the Cistercian's at Mepkin Abby. One of my quiet places, where the rampant thoughts that illed me were swept away beneath the flowing path of silence. No sound, no thought, the oddest place for a vampire to find solace. The greenery and aesthetically designed sandstone, the hush of the foliage-lined grounds, the monastery a trickery of tracks that led hither and thither.

I knew my way around.

They looked through me and gave me a free pass of lassitude. This was the only place that held me in thrall. Not Emmett, nor Jazz or Carlisle knew of my rising hope that a soul fluttered beneath the skeletal lamprey wings of my un-interred oblivion.

The blighted priests were just trying to make do with their chickies on the side; they kept hens and sold the eggs, no more than God's own handmaidens. I wanted to foreswear and scorn them, but the fact that they forgave my ghoulish gargoyle's presence twisted within me.

I was pissed when PETA shut the coops down amidst unfounded rumors of ill-kempt quarters!

Absolved and brazen, they were most wily when they continued to raise the squawking fowls. Whereas before I saw them as nothing but prim be-cloaked puritanical pussies, this defiance garnered my admiration. _Go Monks! Don't let the uppity, holier-than-thou, everyone-must-have-a-cause (or a thousand) bastards keep you down!_

A muttering jumbled mess, Emmett was beyond himself, bullish, steaming, crazed and incensed! I'd never seen him in such a vicious temper, the boyish demon behemoth with his devil-may-care attitude gone violent.

Listing closer to him, listening intently, I caught wind of the debacle that had brought him to this quill shivering state with his hackles raised. Rose's nomad boisterous boy toy Garrett had shown up. The rough-hewn, tall, ropey adventurer had called Emmett's bluff and bluster all to the tune of Rose being more vampire _and_ woman than he could handle.

"He called me _boy_," Bubba's voice a prickly lethal shank.

Little did I know Em's own brand of karma was gonna' kick him in the ass so soon! I was an evil cunt, amused but affecting concern. I really just wanted to watch him in his angsty affliction. This was just the decoy I needed to take my mind off my own hidey hellhole.

A live wire, a riled vampire was something the humans would never understand, never forget. Em pounded straight through the dash as I clamped the steering wheel tighter, platinum bones blanching my skin further white, stomped on the gas. Bristling like a wild boar, his killing teeth sharp as tusks and his venom evident eyes were inky and dispirited.

"The only thing you're gonna kill tonight is them chickens, Bubba! Now get the fuck out before you trash my ride!"

_Or I thrash your own hide._

I thought that throwing a little adversity to the monks would make them that much stronger, _or something_.

And I found it sickeningly funny to watch Emmett go all Black Sabbath on the foul hens. He was literally spitting feathers! Tallywacker with his Talladega dreams deserved a little bit of torment after the shit he'd pulled with my piano and all the off-color comments about Bella and the continuous cockblock that was her.

Not quite biting back chuckles as a flurry of feathers floated down around me, I inwardly thanked Garrett and Rose for the cheap entertainment.

A haughty posh bitch, an heiress turned low rent, Rose was Queen Bee _and_ Bitch of these here parts. And with her background, that I pulled and gathered and spooled out of her stubborn fuckin' head, it was understandable. Her real life, uppercrust, _low_-life fiancé and his clay-pit warrior cohorts had taken turns raping her and then left her for dead. Only the toxin of her sire had brought her back to none-life.

On her agelessness, her timeless beauty, Rose blamed it on good genetics and she carried it off. No one bothered to speculate about her anymore, they knew that at the core of her sugary demeanor was an arctic strength and an iron will the likes of which they'd never seen. We'd heard the tales of vigilante justice. Busting up a gangbang perpetuated on one of her fellow waitresses by a grotty group of salty dogs fresh from a few weeks at sea, Rose had sent them packing. _Not _back in the Evergreen Cargo ship that had towed up the Cooper River and deposited them at Goose Creek. Pine boxes sent them on their way.

Lucky bitch was on her own. I sometimes envied that. She'd never even stepped foot inside of a high school.

Not quite part of the in-crowd, some of these genetic mutants had enough smarts to be leery of us. Generally on the outs with some fucker or other, Emmett was still always a hit at the high school sandpit keg parties. Known for his Hulk-like antics – _The Incredible Hulk or Hulk Hogan, you be the judge_ – he never quite got over the bloodcurdling call of the hunt, first grizzlies and then humans.

None of us did.

Herding three hot-blooded _young_ vampires such as us into a sweat-festered gymnasium writhing with adolescents teeming with fresh blood was just never a good idea. _Jesus H. Christ_. Didn't matter that we were veggies. We all wanted to partake of some good old soul food, _Real Food for Real Vampires_.

You'd never guess he was a seventy-three year old vampire by the way he made fun of the nerd-herd at dorkestra practice. Turned at twenty years old, in the dirty 30's he had been so fond of, after being brought to Carlisle's Klondike outpost following a gruesome bear attack, Emmett resembled the animals that had ended his life and continued to feed his blood lust. His physical attributes all things that Harlequin Romance characters were made of (hells yes, I read them), hirsute and brawny and strapping. Through the decades he had retained his good-humored easy nature. My opposite, it had been a relief to find this quintessential Dixie boy was to become my brother. Always up to one prank or another, Emmett implicated us all so that Jazz and I were guilty by association, marking each of us as delinquents.

The straw that broke The Clapp's back came when we were _teaching_ dingleberry Newton a lesson in the farthest corner of the parking lot after he'd had the fuckin' misguided balls to park his SUV, the 'S' for _sissy_ of course, in my spot! Sallow little fuckface shat his pants as soon as I started hauling the lengths of rope out of the bed of Jazz's truck.

Asking him if he'd like to swing from the Gallow's Tree at the Old City Jail, cool and coiled and ready to spring, we'd hog-tied pencil dick and pulled out the cattle prods. A little bit of hazing never hurt anyone, _nearly_. But Gonorrhea Gonads himself chose that moment to intrude. For damn sure I had plenty of warning of his approach, but I wanted the fuck out of this den of dweebs, _forever_.

Blowing nonexistent snot into his cupped paw, spitting a filthy long stream of baccy that landed at Clapp's feet, Em feigned chagrin, "Aw, coach, we was jist hawsin' around!" Wheedling, whiny, whinging…_perfection_. Secretly satisfied. Dimples deep as potholes that didn't at all hide his happiness.

_Finally_ permanently expelled! Thank the motherfuckin' lord!

I guess that's why I hadn't seen the newest, hopefully not inbred, arrival in town until she started trotting tables at Mama Brown's on weekends. At least her eyes had seemed intelligent, clear and astute. Not crazy with that Appalachian brother-father, sister-mother madness. No missing or cracked teeth. No third nipple as far as my x-ray vision lacking eyes could see.

Bejesus had my undying gratitude that she was a senior, of age…I wasn't ripping my cock from my pubic bone over a minor. Tugging my tackle, masturbating like a maniac, jerkin' my junk off, my spooge flew in all directions, it was a hot zone, or cold zone, firing at will! I could not contain my cock! Not even a hot centerfold in lowbrow Hustler had ever had this affect on me. _And I'd never even seen Bella nekkid! _I was pooch-screwed.

I nearly busted my beef and my hand off in my quest to ejaculate Bella out of my system all to the ramblings of Em, "_That_ gives a whole new meaning to blue balls, you pussy-whupped bitch!"

And now I had to drink my Schlitz through a straw because my hand was a fixed claw from spending so much time wrapped around my own perfect pipeline of a pecker!

At least Jazz, Little Jack Hornboy, was gittin' some.

Master strategist and minge-eater extraordinaire, Jazz would be our tactician should anything ever come of the Volturi's search for me. Not only a Civil War veteran but an inveterate leader of newborn legions, he and his helpmeet Maria who had conscripted him into a bloodstained existence, had taken on masses. And conquered. A drawlin', towheaded, towering Texan who had tasted more human blood than the rest of us Cullens put together, and who still grappled with the haunting hell-on-earth he'd walked.

Assailed by the gamut of sinful hi-falutin' emotions, Jazz had no recourse but to become an EOF, Equal Opps Fucker. Beaten by human emotions, disturbed by his own misdeeds, the newborn armies, the world's wars, he made of this latest manifestation, as our Junior, a love-in. Legs opened for him like the laden stalls first thing in the morning at The World's Biggest Fleamarket. His fuckfest was a swap-meet of meat and muff and tongue and ass.

He'd come to us here, in Cainwhore. Not quite as ancient as the 1500 year old mangled majestic Angel Oak tree on John's Island, Jazz had a thousand more stories to tell. Browbeaten and rooted in evil atrocious acts. Years later found him replete in his skin and his mind, unfolding himself just like the viridian green fronds of the resurrection fern that unfurled over the notched nobbly limbs of Angel Oak. Still quiet but dead on with his barbs and wit like the spikes on a saw palm's stalks. Time, coupled with his laissez-faire, less _live and let die_ and more _live and let love_, attitude, had smoothed out the weathered, careworn sadness from his eyes.

Fractious somberness made way for a certain rascally humor that, mixed with his sex-on-legs appeal, made the chicks all _hoppin' john _for him! He was like Rhett Butler, but not such a hardened cocksucker.

His languorous _Yes m'am_ was almost as adept at wetting knickers as my crooked half-grin.

Not long after Jazz had joined our family, tattoos had finally fuckin' been legalized in this Bible Beater's ass backwards state. Fully enlivened and wanting to feel, if even just the pinching twinge of the needle, Jazz had accepted Em's throwdown to get the indelible ink injected into their skin.

I declined. No cunting motherfucking way did I want to mar the excellence of my alabaster shell hard flesh. And no smack-talkin' way was I going to miss this Carny's sideshow. It was shaping up to be better than The Woman with Three Tits, Two Dicks, and Beard!

Of course Jazz and Emmett were first in line, not that there was a line. But we didn't sleep and the kids were just that excited that they hauled my ass away from my cold beer and warm keys.

Dumbfucks didn't think it through.

I snickered sideways and tried to withhold my mirth from Jazz's scrutinous stare.

Em wanted _Rose is My Girl_, even though she clearly wasn't, emblazoned across a portrait I'd sketched for him. I'd included jagged fangs, just for fun. He thought it was "cute". He wanted it boldly painted on his forearm, of course.

Cracker Jack Jazz didn't show us his images. All I knew was that he wanted the tats to cover his many scars, no matter that they were invisible to the naked eye, these wounds that undulated in the sun's shift were loaded with his past.

It all played out as I had anticipated. The syringe ended up not puncturing their skin with the multi-colored dye only breaking one after another of the tattooist's needles while he looked on perplexingly, and I fucking laughed! It only served to rile Em as nothing before!

Catching me in a chokehold, he pile-drove me into the floor. I just wriggled and slithered out of his clasp and shook my head in mock disappointment at Jazz. I mean _really_, thinking was not Emmett's strong suit, but Jazz had no excuse!

With a sheepish grin and a whispered 'Aw shucks', Jazz just let it all go. That was his new road, the dusty dirt path upon which he traveled. He had no idea where it was leading him.

But I did.

Soon he would be under the command of another.

I had never truly seen him up in arms until recently. While I knew that _his_ reckoning day was fast approaching, all Junior understood was the way my feelings lashed from one latitude to another in his presence. Skewed and shifty, and my lips were sewn shut.

Fucking _everything_ was coming to a head. And not his dick's head either.

Well, _maybe_, just Alice. _Perhaps_.

_Alice_. I feared for Jazz and wanted to protect him. At the same time I was lit with exuberance over the bloody revolution on the horizon.

This change of play was all about _American Gothic_ meeting _Hispano-Flemish Gothic._ Past, present and future were about to become a roiling, massive, tumultuous clutter of chaos.

_The Nightmare_ was to come. _The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters_, that fitted me right down to my shitkickers.

And spoke of Bella.

A distinct snapdragon scent pervaded my nose, overtaking the strawberry havens I had been playing over and over in my rotating wheel wagon of a mind. It mingled with coriander and bursts of…clover?

_She was here._

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**A/N: Did I forget to say…REVIEW, please. And spread the Good Word.**

**This is, most likely, my one and only high school scene, so I hope you enjoyed!**

**Word up: I've said it many a time and I damn well will say it again…take Broken Doll (on Twilighted) and Bad Habit (on both sites) for a ride. You can thank me for it later!**

**Come play on the Twilighted thread; we're gorgeously funny sarky smartass wicked bitches and we break out new toys for newbies: www(dot)twilighted(dot)?f=33&t=4493**

**If you're interested in some scary, macabre Gothic paintings as appreciated by our Eddie, you can follow the links on my profile. Truly the phantasmagorical stuff that nightmares are made of.**


	3. This is a Crock of Shit

**This is a Crock of Shit**

**V, my delicious beta, thank you so very much!**

**To the girls at the thread, y'all inspire me, give me pictures of Pretty, and make me ridiculously happy (as well as motivate me to descend into dirty Rebelward lows)!**

**I love all the new 'Wards' ya'll are coming up with (Countryward, Home Home-on-the-Rangeward) so keep 'em coming.**

**Special ta to my mate Tracey who daily provides me with rip-roaring manifestos on Eddie!**

**Disclaimer: Whilst Rebelward and I bed down nightly (and yes, he is a very dirty boy in every sense of the word), SM owns all that pertains to Twilight. **

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Wrangling with my inner fiend was getting old. I'd had just about enough of that shit! Bitch could get her bones crushed by the shapeshifter for all I cared.

And yet here I was, hiding in the upstairs bathroom of Esme and Carl's elevated, perched-on-stilts house that overlooked an unending sweep of sweetgrass swaying creek that fed into the Cooper one end and traced down towards the Atlantic Ocean on the other with its stronghold of twats on Isle of Palms. Shame there were only stingrays, heron, pelicans and the occasional dolphin swimming about in the paltry briny depths. Flipper did not appeal to my palate.

Christ knew there were enough balls of wadded up tissues spilling over my trashcan to start a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Not from snot. From spunk, as I continued to blow my wad. Torture by hand. _I just wanted to fuck already!_

"_Now boys, you should always keep a fresh supply of paper goods in case of visitors," _I recalled Esme's precise lesson in etiquette. Emmett had to swallow a grin larger than life because, _damn Bo Diddley_, we all knew what flew into the whispery thin creases of Kleenex!

Costco ranked right up there with the Bloodmobile for Esme. The warehouse-like store was a stronghold of genetic mutants that passed for the locals west of the Ashley River, the CEOs of which had upgraded Esme's standard Gold Star membership to Executive level on account of the reams of _paper goods_ stacked in our outhouse.

Wolfmobile equals Bloodmobile; now that was nothing short of win-win.

How was I ever going to screw the bitch if I had literally never talked to her? And then the thoughts of her thromboning jugular! Cameos of its thumping pounded me; there were a million ways I wanted to do her. I couldn't even think about Bella without the interlacing craving of bedding and beheading her ripping up my cock's main vain with venom and whetting my throat with poison!

I was stewing, Frogmore style, and _enough_ because even _I_ was getting bored with the nose pinching, deep sighing, hair-raking bullshit!

I was choking on lust. It had been a full day since I had seen _Bella_. I shivered with equal parts desire and deviousness at the mere thought of her name. Giving up my moratorium at stalking, I was a nightly resident in the pitch black and gray forest that surrounded the outward edges of her house. Of an evening, with crickets blaring and begging for a good round of napalm to quiet the minute motherfuckers so I could concentrate on the thoughts I knew she kept secreted deep within, Bella had barreled out the back porch. Lit in the monochromatic hues of the night, she trickled through vegetation and reached within the shingled shed until she hit the switch so that dim, yellowed, anti-insect light pooled around her and made her a sepia-tinted siren.

Silently jettisoning closer, I all but mouthed the one cobwebbed window pane that separated us.

She only worked weekends at Mama Brown's to supplement the Swan household income and line her pockets with dirty half-torn, folded into triangles and not quite-right pieces of trashy origami greenbacks in order to fund her whacked out hobby and books; _blather blather blather_. I was more interested in what she was doing under the swinging, bare, lantern-like bulb above her head as she reached low into drawers and pulled out the tools of her unlikely trade.

The form before her on the workbench was a White Tailed Jackrabbit. Resting on its grey-white haunches, its long ears raised to the rafters. The eye sockets were empty, beady caverns waiting to be filled.

Bella seemed to have quite the technique and laid out before her were all the implements she used; tanning chemicals, a top of the line Merlin set complete with a longneck angle grinder and a Black Magic Mini-Flesher Disc, manikins and animal components.

The work consumed her, squinting and frowning, stopping and stepping back and pacing as her head tilted to the side in examination. Her long, wavy, chestnut hair stuffed into a messy bun that was pinned to her head with two pencils, erasers bitten off, and a lashing of worn leather. From here, her eyelashes were golden swags of plumage that spilled dusky shadows beneath her eyes. The thin, grey, oversized cotton t-shirt she wore was worn throughout with stretchmarks on fabric that pulled it into threadbare nothingness.

I wanted to trace my fingers over the almost-tears in the tissue soft cotton. Not even Charlie's castoff could seclude the shaped roundness of her tits, a handful, no more, no less.

An artist, a sculptor, a woodworker. A craftswoman who played with dead things.

Skinned them, tanned them, preserved and positioned them just so.

Taxidermy and Bella. _I_ was the dead thing that wanted to stuff _her_! I was a sick fucker, but that was so sexy that I was already envisioning how I would _artfully_ arrange her long, ivory, plush limbs _just so_ before I fucked her until her own eyes, glassy with lust, rolled back into that chestnut-maned head of hers!

Trying to hold back, I had watched her delicate wrists twist; her fingers pluck, gather, and situate. There was no trembling to her hands that moved with sureness and quick movements once her action was decided upon.

Consummate. I wanted to consume her!

In choppy bursts, my breathing filled the old-fashioned leaded glass pane with a tracery of my own exhaust.

Remembering those images that were soldered into my brain, backing into the sink's white marble console in Esme's guest powder room, unzipping, I plied my cock with a soft touch, replaying the path of Bella's sweeping fingers over the hare'ssoft-furred muzzle. A glide of silver-light fingers, thinking of Bella's slipping all over me, _fuck the STUFFED animal_, my head cranked back and my erection swelled. Dusty jeans spilled to the floor, leaving pale brown trails of grit on the marble white surface that echoed the counter.

Pulling up hard, I had poison as the perfect lube. I did not feel my frigidity, but she would. _So hard_. The tip of my dick was opened up, those tiny, usually hidden lips that puckered like a kiss from her mouth. I rasped my index finger across, and gasped! Pushing down hard, cupping my balls, the muscles in my body that were supposed to be nothing more than inert weight, but suddenly rolled and wielded unreckoned power!

With my hand, long fingers almost able to wrap around my shaft, I grabbed hard and grappled against the wall opposite me. Forehead met floral wallpaper and twisted to the side. Breath faltered and ceased.

FUCK BREATH!

God I wanted to fuck Bella to death!

My head whirled against the scratchy surface of the wallhanging with each swirling pass.

Headbanging.

Base to tip. Pushing into the divot. Hair a mess of fuck. Free forearm an ocean of muscle that bore me up and wrenched just as rigidly as I jerked myself off!

One Two Three Four! Hard, cunt, soft, sex, diving, emerging. My penis pulsed, unbreakable.

Tracing two rigid fingers up my underside, denting and dastardly and deceitful, I licked my lips that were suddenly dry and my brain was a fired-up, fried landscape of Bella's carmine lips swallowing me whole!

Jolting with furor, tugging at the root and swallowing my head, over and over and over, turning around and smashing my ass and the back of my craned head against the wall, I felt the cum fuck gathering!

_Bella!_

_Fuck_. Bella. _Fuuuuuck_! My enormous cock lengthened one last time into a tribute to this mortal girl before the engorgement shook out of me, like a steed spilling my seed. My calves and thighs quivered as toxin spurged from me, shattering the orgasmic-totaled wreck that looked back at me from the mirror.

I licked my palm and used my own skin to wash myself clean, like an animal, picturing Bella doing the same. With that kittenish tongue.

There was not enough oxygen in the room to replace the air I'd stolen in that fantasy-phallic-fuck!

_This was a crock of shit_. I didn't feel one ounce of relief.

I was groveling before Bella's gorgeous gash that I hadn't even caught glimpse of yet. She was stuck in my craw!

Quickly shoving the scrunched squares of toilet paper down the loo I flushed and cringed, as if that wasn't a tell right there. Fucking bastard vampire hearing! Even if they hadn't noticed my harsh, superfluous breathing, they would have taken note of the rattle of plumbing as sewage clanked through the pipes. Cunt mother whore. And Emmett. He fucking snorted out his broken-ten-times -in-his-previous-life nose when he listened to the commode swill down the tracers of my jism.

He was at the ready when I slid down the banister to the main floor. Good fucking thing Esme was nowhere in sight!

"So, what you been doin' up there, braw?" I wanted to slam him down the un-used elevator shaft. Dickwad.

Instead I threw a marble-like knee to his groin and was pleasantly rewarded by the death-knell of his guffaw. Like the stony pineapple sculptures that crowned many an entryway in the French district as a sign of hospitality, a ragged blow to Bubba's dick that was most inhospitable.

Hugging his hurting groin, Em couldn't resist a pathetic parting shot, "Whoa Nelly! Hey, stud muffin, _just fuck the human already_!"

Momma Esme had once caught me chapping the chub in her bathroom. _Not good times._ Without even blinking at my blighted plight, _because bitch didn't need to blink, did she?_, she towed me up and tugged me along while I shirked my hard dick back into my mucky Dickies. My shoulders definitely sloped into a crestfallen landscape.

"Edward," Fuck me, there she went again, "I want to show you something."

I was one hundred and ten percent certain that unless it was the latest edition of Playboy, I wouldn't be interested.

Dejectedly, I allowed her to push me onto the cream colored loveseat with way more fucking force than was necessary. I squirreled about until I found one ounce of comfort with my cock still veering on the precipice of cumming.

"Look here. See this?" She was pointing at some square-jawed Old Village idiot whose eyes were more lifeless than a corpse on Hallow's Eve, all dimwitted and dumb as cunt in his nuptials. _Jaysus_. We weren't going here, were we? She had trotted out the Charleston Magazine. Strike that. _The _Charleston Magazine. The periodical of pansies, far and wide.

"Now, honey, I bet Mr. Rutledge Pinckney Tradd the _THIRD_ never pawed his own penis in his mother's house…am I right?" And again with the non-blinking, even when her pseudo prudish mouth said _penis_.

I melted back into the cushions and knew the full extent of dismay and mortification. My price on earth was to be chastised like a boy over the fact that I masturbated in my mom's house? Fuck! _Esme, you shittin' me here? _I was one hundred and then some years old and needed to leave go, on occasion!

What was my answer? "No'm."

While I trod a worn trail in the heart of pine boards of the family room, Em bounced up and down like a toddler overloaded on the cocktail of sugary sweet lemonade and the promise of a Curious George marathon as we awaited the imminent coming of Alice. It was like The Hound of bastard Baskervilles, a whodunit crime scene when a crime had yet to be committed. Tiring of my pacing and Bubba's jitters, Esme sent us out to the back forty for some lawn maintenance. A distraction from whatever was eating me up -- Esme, wondering at my recent return to assholishness, gave me a tight hug, her spritzed-on Ma Griffe itching my nose, and whispered up at me, "I don't know what ails you, dear, but never mind, it'll all come out in the _warsh_." Yeah, just like the spooge stains on my denims…._right_.

A gentle, _gentile_, southern lady, Esme was all things soft. And tough. And whip-cracking. A heathen just as us, but she and Carlisle both held within them the hope that some sort of afterlife, a Heaven, awaited us.

Tablespoons of _sugah _and a sweet smile, she kept me, Em, and Jazz in line.

Sugar cut through with a helping of ass-whuppin'. I'd been on the receiving end of her "_hush yer mouth"_ and the copyrighted cuff to the back of the head more times than I cared to remember. Esme had a mean right hook. One searing look alone from her golden eyes turned contemptible half-black was enough to make us run scurrying in the opposite direction.

Genteel. It was not something she had to work at. An honest-to-goodness Southern lady, Esme was employed at Abide Awhile, one of the many local plant nurseries. And she took her work home in the truest manner; the front twenty boasting planters that were made of household cast-offs that she bartered for at the reclamation yards; claw-footed tubs, hunks-of-junk, the odd basin even was flowing over with the blossoms of lantana, hibiscus, lavender, crocosmia, salvia, and coreopsis. The flat ears of the taro shouldered up amongst variegated canna and calla lilies alike. It should have been a blight to the eyes but somehow Esme made it tasteful and _quirky. _Naturally refined, Esme fit in with little effort and her clientele grew quickly, requested by customers who lived on plastic within the imitation Euro palaces of new-old palatial Charleston Singles in I'on, Hamlin Plantation, Olde Park and the like. McMansions.

On the other hand, she was pure trailer trash. Keeping her precious things – diamonds, rubies, glittering gems housed in casings of gold and strung on antediluvian gilt chains – in fucking Ziploc baggies. Wal-mart's own off-brand! She thought she was keeping things neat and tidy that way! All of the centuries of wealth shoved into sandwich bags and strewn about the top of her dresser that she'd purchased at Linda Page's Thieves Market, that chicken coop turned antique co-op that promised more junk than you could shake a stick at!

Every damn time I saw her, I had to laugh at the stunning, glittering, diamond-encrusted ring she wore with a christly band-aid wound around it to keep it from slipping off in lieu of getting it resized.

Jesus, _Esme_, come _on._

In spite of it all, she was my mother. She had taken me in, forgiven me my many sins. Esme was the Rock of Ages of this family.

Not to go all Oedipus, _but yeah_, she was the only piece of vampire ass worthy of Carl's love. And theirs was…_magnificence._ Timeworn and still timeless! Something that I no longer looked for and never expected for myself.

I'd get by with the quick high and thrill ride of this time, this now, this place.

Esme ruled the roost and Carlisle was cock of the block.

He had dropped the faggoty -_isle_ from his forename on our move here as well as his MD for a DVM. Having boned up in advance, he was well prepared when it came time to jump ship from England.

My guilt knew no bounds that he was giving up his calling on account of no-count me. We had had no idea just how delighted he would be with this new personification! Ever the smooth linguist, and cunnilinguist – _believe me, I'd heard more than enough of Esme's caterwauling to want to take blunt pencils to my eardrums _-- Carl was quickly wrapped up in the twang of the southern regions. No less was he a quick study in local human nature and appearance. Adorned in cheap, coarse, striped broadcloth shirts, Wrangler jeans and scuffed out old cowboy boots instead of his previously permanent garb of cashmere and silk and the finest handmade suits, Carl was still gentlemanly but with an endearing, _at least to Esme,_ hint of the vulgar running through him.

She did not, however, take quite so affectionately to the filthy cigar stubs that he chomped in order to _appease his oral fixation_. Did I ever roll my eyes at that one!

Esme was all about cross-pollination and Carl was newly fascinated by the workings of artificial insemination. If the lingering scent of fresh human blood had not been enough when he worked in the ER, now he positively stenched of formaldehyde and bull's balls. He fucking stank worse than Emmett's dick cheese!

Goddamn, I could just imagine his first conversation with Bella, bold, weird, exquisite Bella; _Yee-ah, bein' a large animal vet does pose it's…ah…," Carl paused just long enough to spew out a frosty stream of fake-phlegm accompanied by a tremendous hocking noise, "…problems, considering what some in these here parts would call our 'lifestyle'." _Carl would finger-quote and chortle heartily to himself, slap his thigh and howl in amusement!

Bastard knew how to lay it on thick.

One look at her beautiful bovid eyes, all languorous and luscious pools of seized depth that threatened to push me under for the full count, I hoped he'd keep his wisecracks to hisself!

And what the hell? Why was I even pondering _her_ meeting _them?_

Not. Gonna'. Happen.

A dustbowl of dirt flew into my face and I was presented with Em donuting out on his Kubota. _Ass. Ass on imported shit that called itself a tractor._ One hand on the wheel and the other on the gearshift, I shifted back to the present as we tore over the meadow. Back to his badass, irrepressible, reprehensible self after the night of chicken culling at the Corner, Cullen-style, he was ripping the shit out of the far back field of the bluff under the guise of mowing it.

"YEEHAW, motherfucker!"

Bubba. He was cuttin' a rug in his own fool mind over the fact that, at our breakfast of brews at Brown's earlier, Rose had actually played nice! As in slithered instead of stomped, simpered instead of spat, and _apologized_ for Garrett's comments. The entire twenty or some odd regulars became statues at her ringing words! _I'm sorry_ and Rosalie Hale never the twain did meet! The slosh of molasses-thick coffee shaking hands with saucers and teaspoons trembling was the only thing that broke the silence. Cold-hearted cunt _emoting_? Who'd've thunk it!

While sorry-ass shithead was still agaggle, I regaled reformed Rose with the previous night's Black Sabbath meets Mepkin Abbey tale, and she didn't once forget to blink and smack Bubblicious while she laughed her ass off with a ribald belly rumble that shook the timber frame!

It was then that I saw the minutest bit of Rose that had so entranced Emmett, and finally reckoned that they would be permanently bound like Castor and Pollux.

With a parting chuckle, Rose started to leave our table but then turned around, sashayed back, and leaned over for a jaw-dropping cleavage shot. Gripping his jock-jaw in one hand, fire engine red fingernails scarping across his pouty little boy's lower lip, she leaned forward with all of Momma's male clientele more pent-up than a sailor on pay-leave in a whorehouse and almost toppling over in their chairs for a gander at her gorgeous glory-mounds. Rose brought her full lips to Bubba's reddening ear and with a lick and whisper tickled his tommy with these supple words, "Emmett, don't you worry. When we _fuck-_" more clattering spoons coupled with not a scant few moans, "…it'll be like your first time. I don't do sloppy seconds, so you better save it up, _honey._" _That's my girl!_

Bracing himself, visibly aquiver, Emmett had captured Rose by her hand as she retreated once more, he fucking actually stammered, "Rose, um, would you go out on a date with me?"

With her acceptance, Emmett was at the top of his game again shouting,"It's a ho-down, not a throwdown!" Bobby facking Flay, _please, I could fillet his mignon in two point two seconds._ We were off and cue the dueling banjoes as Em started up with his _nar nar nar nar, nar nar nar nooow. _Like drovers herding cattle, we raced our farm machinery from goldenrod ridden end to end under the guise of earning our keep of the blood stashed in our Frigidaire. All _Rose_ this and _Rose _that, and _grease monkey_ and _knew her way around a monkey wrench_ and wah wah wah! Smallweed had on a castor hat that was thrown back off his brow and a dimestore bought corn cob pipe that he gnawed through with his teeth. I tuned jackass out and concentrated on Alice's approach.

Headed to the bluff first, she finally made her late arrival just as the sun was beating its worn path of red, pinks and orange down the horizon. The Cullen family 'manse' was located at the crux of Mount Pleasant and Awendaw, situated far back amongst the forest and swamp and creek, sitting on a small hillock. I met Alice at the path thinking, _Honey, you did not need to wait until nightfall…you do know that the myths about us immolating in sunlight is pure superstition, right? _

Shirking off my hand that met the small of her back to usher her up the perpendicular two-fold flights of stairs to the screened in porch that met the stars beginning to cross the deepening flint sky, Alice slinked with a baleful look back at me and hovered over the steps four at a time. She thought she'd worm her way into the non-hearts and dead souls of Esme and Carl first, having divined how I would react.

The four of us convened with Alice in the parlor. She accepted Esme's hug, shook Carl's hand firmly, allowed an untrue girlish giggle at Emmett's club around her back all the while raking the room for the man she'd walked hell and earth to be with.

Jazz was MIA. Her eyes a furor of disappointment and wan limbs a tightrope of barely withheld aggression. Meeting my inspection, Alice narrowed her look and her aquiline nostrils flared. She knew in that instant that I had sent Jasper on a wild goose chase so's we could get the lay of the land without his interference. Esme believed I was being entirely too Momma Bear and possessive, and she was worried about my retreat into…_mahself. _

A fuckin' ticker tape parade ensued, a flurry of unnecessary activity and this was another vamp for the Cullen Five…_Hoo-fuckin-ray Henry_! Everyone was jovial. I felt noxious. Empty. Fuming and spuming. But not one to avoid the gauntlet, I met Alice's penetrating glower, not one bit of her a flower, as she sat, tensed, upon the edge of Esme's Ethan Allen lounge chair.

Smirking, smiting, enjoying the games with the gamine, I opened with a gambit, "So, Alice, what brings you to East Bumfuck Eqypt?" Attentive as only Rutledge the Third –the weeny peen bred on tee times and High Tea– could be. Minus the dickheadedness of my impertinent question.

Straightening up, without so much as a breath, Alice gave as good as she got, "My oh my, aren't you just the picture of _reintarnation, _Eddie."

Despite Alice's rejoinder and ability to defend herself against us hillbillies,two seconds flat found Emse hissing in my ear, "Edward Anthony Masen Cullen, you watch that filthy mouth around the young lady!"

"Oh,SNAP!" Shouted an overjoyed Bubba.

She did _not _just go there. Only Esme could get away with that shit. I wheedled away, "But she's no lad-"

_SMACK!_

"Esme, JES-"

A pinch twist to my ear, "Don't you backtalk me! I will say this One. More. Time. Edward Anthony _Masen_ Cullen, don't you dare darken this doorstep with that J-word!" Fuck. Esme was screeching at such a high pitch that the floor to ceiling windows on all sides of the room rattled and threatened to crack.

I bit my tongue off to keep from uttering, _"JESUS, who the fuck do you think you're kidding?"_ and instead whispered, "Yes'm," with my eyes downcast.

Esme the disciplinarian fuckin' scared me.

And Alice had seen it all coming. Bitch coulda' warned me.

We were not warming to each other in this Cleaver-Cullen-killing montage. As to be expected.

I was scared, a first time, that there would be no expelling, no exorcising of this spirited, less-than spritely, child.

"Now be a dear and bring in the refreshments and stop being such an uppity little prick," her honeycomb eyes widened and she clasped her hand over her own blasphemous mouth as if she couldn't believe what had just come out of it. A dicey glare followed quick on the heels, directed at Em, daring him to let loose with his Beavis-like _hee hee hee_. Fucker denied me the pleasure of an Esme gone wild by shifting uncomfortably in his seat and making a straight line of his lips to hold in the hilarity.

During this exchange, Carl was plying the southern charm and Em, forever taking everything at face value, loved her on sight, even in Alice's cagey standoffishness. Sickening really.

"Paw, ain't she somethin'?" Em couldn't resist the dig, knowing that Carl despised _paw_ almost as much as I did _Edward_. Yes! A smackdown between Bubba's brute force and Carl's centuries' old cunning and speed, perfect timing!

A growl ripped the ripe air as thug squared off against cool assassin. And were halted by the brooking no nonsense tones of Esme, "Boys! Need I remind you that we have company?" looking over the top of specs she didn't need with one eyebrow raised in challenge.

I was still trying to get a handle on Alice's distinct movements, her voice, her watchfulness that permeated a willingness to do anything so long as she could have Jazz. She submitted to my inquisition, to the trivialities of paterfamilias, the matriarchal marauding of Esme, and then to my subsequent babysitting of her as the others sped off to retrieve Jazz.

With great effort, she inveigled herself into the family dynamics. Regardless, she was ingratiated immediately. Possessed of a talent we had never encountered, a seer with the ability to read the future before its vista dawned, Alice was gifted. And we were not fuck-stupid enough to squander her mad skills!

They were tripping all over themselves to put Alice at her ease until I pulled them aside to _forewarn_ them that not only was she prodigiouswith forethought, she was also a consummate klepto.

"_A telepathic psychic thief. A premonitive purloiner. A crystal ball toting gypsy talented with the sleight of hand,_" I continued to tick off all of my new nicknames for Alice on my fingertips while I waited for the parentals' reactions.

Rewarded by Esme's gasping, "I _never_!" and Carl booming to Em, "Lock up the silver, son!" I chortled merrily and slapped my knees while Alice stomped off to the porch.

It was all part and parcel of her debilitating stay in the asylum, even before she was turned, she was a might _touched_ in the head. Her intuitive spells sparking distrust, her folks had committed her to the loony bin where she'd gone even further off the rails of the crazy train.

And that's how come I was trapped with little Miss Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, guarding the family's jewels (that Esme kept zip-locked), as well as artifacts from our travels, souvenirs from our pasts, huntin' trophies, and original masterpieces alike. Like an aqueduct, suddenly opened and voracious and a flood of impulses she could no more control than a newborn could stave off the flaming thirst for hot blood, Alice was eyeing up the contents of the homestead. Taking stock, not out of maliciousness, but mendacity that was the camouflage of the pain of her time in the mental ward.

The trifling ornery oracle marched up to the matriculation caps that were framed and displayed over the stairwell. _Now what the fuck was Bats in her Belfry here going to do with those?_ Visions of Harlot O'hara getting busted by Mammy as she whined on about running up a going-to-'Lanta-dress from the heavy moss green portieres of Tara rolled through my mind. I could almost hear Miss'ssippi Alice cackling amongst the litter of scalawags, damned Yankees and Antebellum carpetbaggers! Her shit was churned like freshly whipped butter!

Adjourning to the front yard, needing to be free of the claustrophobic house innards and Alice's quiet scheming, I watched her descend the steps to join me.

A slow grace, the placement of her feet, toes first, was soft, accurate. Trivial bursts of buoyancy amongst the full range of anxiety and hostility, certain smidges of vivacity allowed me the opportunity to rummage through the pages of her past like a book. A pinprick of light beamed out at certain points, illuminating who she had been, who she could become.

What I knew of Alice consisted of her time in the insane house, punishment for her untamed mind, and then scores of years spent on her own. Solitary confinement that scored the craving flesh of her soul. Unlike Rose, she never found her niche. Dangerous, possessed, vengeful, she had killed the vampire who had begot her, James, who was a lapsed Volturian! Wicked.

But also loving, loyal, caring, and once addled by the madness of her visions of Jazz, she was his…_forever._ Only able to finally come to him in this precise rift in time.

No longer adrift, she was adept at quelling her thoughts around me, only allowing views of chirpy twittering, not the fact beneath. I didn't fucking like being left in the dark.

Earlier, while Em, Esme, and Carl had locked the china cabinet and stowed away Maw Esme's precious sweetgrass basket collection all the while tut-tutting over Mystic Meg's pickpocket tendencies, they whispered phrases like _red-headed stepchild_ and _cast out from her own home. _ I rolled my eyes at the fact they forgot she could fucking hear them carrying on about Oliver Twist and Fagin, while Alice had sidled up to me.

Like the second coming of the anti-Christ, "You think this is bad? Just you wait until the folks get a load of your Bella!"

The SHIT? Obviously the malevolent gremlin had missed out on debutante's charm school. What the fuck was with this pint-sized heathen? _My_ Bella?

Walking along the glossy, bouncing, black joggling board that sat at the bottom of Carlisle and Esme's two tiered steps overlooking a swampy, tall-grassed creek spread out before the acreage, Alice leapt once before taking long bounding steps, a fallen angel that was near to finding her solace. Sure-footed and slinky. To me, Alice's slithering over the swayback board emphasized the plank of demise that was to become of us. With her at the forefront. And always Bella.

Who did she think she was? She didn't even fucking know me! And yet while she prattled away nonsensically about the travesty of today's fashions – that was her own brand of armored costume**,** her interest in haute Goth; Rodarte, McQueen, Galliano, Pugh amongst other foreign names that meant jack shit to me, a method of fitting in and taking the glaring radiance off of her puckish peculiarity -- she continued to pelt my head with visions of Bella. Bella _and me._ Additional distractions. Rattling my cage.

Retracting the curtains even more, revealing murky impressions of possibilities, Alice wrangled me in. Kissing, _holding hands_ -- GAH! Eddie Cullen did _not_ fucking hold hands with no chick, no-how! I just wanted to cop a feel of her ta-tas, that would do me! -- hugging, a slight shot of an erotic nude tangle caught my attention. I flecked my hungering filtered orbs to tarot-dealing, future-wielding Alice. Only to have her _tsk_, shake her head, and smile that smug self-satisfied smirk that belonged on my lips alone.

The bitch. The portentous whore. Alice. She looked nothing like Alice in Wonderland, no black Mary-Janes, no pastel hue had ever been borne upon her skin. Diminutive and curvaceous, cinders and coal and shadows, she would be the foil to Jazz's blond unbearable lightness. His tarnished glow.

Soiled. Sullied. Each of them in their own archaic days gone by.

Outfitted in black, a formfitting strapless top that flared at her miniature waist into a skirt made up of crisp crushed old fabric, heaps of underskirts filling it out until the whole thing ended at her knees. Her short jacket was diamonds of air criss-crossed by silken threads. A breeze of cloth that was hardly a reality. Had to know that her tattered, laddered tights had cost a pretty penny. I could easily wreak such havoc with my teeth. Laced up tightly to her knees, the boots that shod her feet were a farrier's dream of softest black leather and a heel that added inches to her short stature.

Not screaming, but saturated in money. Filthy lucre. Simple, luxurious, opulent, and above all a definite destitution of spirit.

Alice's flawlessness was of another era altogether. Ethereal and eerie. Dungeons and dank recesses of electroshock therapy and screaming bodily affliction, blinded and nonsensical, hers was an everlasting beauty that knew horror intimately and was that much more difficult to look at because of it. She had the type of appeal that witches wrapped around themselves. All-seeing, sensual, and frightful. The incantations of her life-force entranced and repelled mortals all at once. She was a conjurer, and sensing her own aberration, she cloaked herself in the barrier of black stirred together with cleverness and a 21st century knowledge of the gloomiest reaches of fashion. Illusory.

I was not fooled. Transient, provident, she promised a good old fashion _hainting. _And everything about her was authentic, _move over Missus Snape, there's a new crone in town_, but for the disingenuousness of her motives.

_Blah blah blah blah…._

_Wait! What the Sam Hill was that?_ Bella, briefly, whiter than her own usual pallidness, with bloodred-tainted golden eyes. Transformed into an indissoluble shape. Moving with poise and elegance as only our kind could do! And me at her side, loping silently through the lemon-lime haze of the forest's caul.

Jesus Fucking Christ! Was she trying to tell me that Bella was going to be a vampire? That Bella was my mate. Was _The One_?

My manifest destiny? My Minerva?

Back the Fuck Up! I silently pleaded with Alice to continue down that path, but she glittered at me and wove back into her designer diatribe.

I knew enough of our lore, knew every single last dreg of it inside out and had imbibed each morsel Carl had fed me through the moldering years to understand that Bella was my singer, _la tua cantata_. I had understood that instantly and told no one of the truth. Only capable of resisting the Circean call of her crimson flow through years of exposure to the dumber race, my throat was still full of white hot ashes every time I met her. Gagging back the reflex to tear into that summoning jugular whose blood caused a pink flush that simultaneously made me want to sink, satchel deep, within her pussy. All told, Bella made me a self-immolating, stone-cold-frozen, burning vampire-made-man all at the same time!

I was a relic and her static fuzz was a requiem of the crypts of ageless love that I could never have. And I was the void that she would not fill. I strangled the budding fleeting hope.

A tiny blue-tailed skink with its four amphibious legs and the yellow on black markings that trailed down to its azure tail dashed in front of Alice. She feinted towards it, predatory, and it scattered into the scrabbly undergrowth.

Reptilian.

All the while I tried to digest this shit, Alice, annoyingly buzzing, dangling that carrot in my face like I was no more than a young colt;_Alice_ who I wanted nothing more than to swat away like the house fly that had a death wish when trapped in my trailer, continued her rant about the rebirth of rugged genuine Americana , Wayfarers, Alden boots, Penfield vests, and Sugar Cane Denims that were reworked reproductions of 1947 501's.

Yammering and _yadda yadda yadda'ing_ on, I might could die a happy vampire if I could just throw her lithe limbed body into the flash crackle of the buzzing bug light!

I started to hum, beneath my breath, like a foolish five-year old to drown out that tiny yapper. Fucking just like a Shi-tzu! I'd once seen one of the weeny wastes of space tumble out of its owner's lap, through the open driver's side window as said cunt driver took a turn too fast. Damn funniest thing I ever did see! A mutt executing a perfect army roll! Shouting out, "TEN POINTS!" I busted the slab of my gut over that…fuck MasterCard, that shit was _priceless_. My humming and rude remembrances were all to no avail as Alice simply continued to assail me with a barrage of metro mo's on the runway of her mind sporting my own duds that were original while theirs were but the trappings of yuppydom.

Apparently she had an appreciation for my being a trendsetter. Fucking whatever, I rolled my eyes. 'Course I did.

Decapitation at the hands of the Volturi, being burned-dead would be better than this rant by the frenzied fashionista!

_Palm reader, no less._

She was fucking killing me, this peevish puissant pixie! Suddenly I could not cunting wait for Jazz to get a load of this! He was screwed. Completely utterly lost. Poor bastard.

Where the fuck was dickwad?

Sibilant tones found the shell of my ear, "The Glitterati are after me too."

"What now?" _Glitterati, she knew how to coin a phrase!_

"I killed James, my sire, one of the Volturi brethren. If that weren't enough to _git their goat_ they want my powers nearly as much as they desire yours."

So, we were two freaks in a peapod, didn't mean I had to like her. Me, omniscient and her, omni-voyant.

With her here we would provide an almighty call to the ancient ones! My throat tightened around a burst of fear that I could taste on the back of my tongue, bitter and dreadful.

My voice was harsh and my eyes jagged with the hurt to come as I questioned, "Why are you here, Alice?"

Her face was a not-quite-perfect image of serenity. Just…_still._ As if she'd seen a bloody horror show and was not going to let me view it. Sequestered. I was adept at barring the thoughts of others; I did it daily, hourly, by the second. Emmett, Jazz, Rose, Esme and her ever-lovin' call to find me a mate, Carl…well, I still tapped into his head on occasion as he endlessly intrigued me.

But Alice threw up a barbed wire fence across her mind that read _Trespassers will be shot on sight. _Elusive.

"For Jasper," her eyes softened and she swung slightly before finishing, "And strength in numbers," her jaw now tight and the words dead. Mulish.

"What else?" I was shaking and in shock.

Careening straight back into her fancy dress of fake frayed giddiness, giggling, "You're not ready yet, _Eddie._ But Bella and I are going to be such _good_ friends!_" _

The long arm of the Volturi just got that much shorter.

Pummeling against the fortress of her brain, I sought an answer. What was behind the sidelong look that accompanied her comment about Bella? A fresh panic pounded up and down me. Sinister, Alice was filled up with ulterior intentions.

A whirling dervish of demonism, I knew she was going to break apart our trefoil brotherhood. The Middle Ages tapestry of her past, as a broken human as well as a wandering squandering vampire, was a misfortune. Alice deserved our succor, if that was what she was after. But I needed answers.

As if called by my thoughts and _her _presence, Jazz's classic black 1948 Ford F-1, shiny as the day it was born, growled over the dirt rubble strewn road and into the clearing.

The other three were conspicuously absent. That was my cue to leave but I wasn't ready to relinquish my guardianship of Jazz. I didn't trust Alice as far as I could toss her twenty yards into the distance. I was worried about her stability in terms of Jazz, my l'il bro. All that she retained of humanity was rolled up into this meeting.

Yeah, his free-wheeling, dick-wielding days were a thing of the past. Jasper and his war of Northern Aggression, or _The Great Unpleasantness_ as he liked to call it, stood not a chance. And _that_ war had nothing on this!

_More snatch for me!_ I rejoiced, and subdued the brain-stew Bella made of my head, and my _head._

_Fuck you, motherfucker!_ I snickered internally. But then cut my inner jubilation short as I sank beneath the lifeless pressure of all I now knew.

Twitching almost imperceptibly as if in shock-therapy, the sound of his tires scrudding over the dust path was the only thing that, _fucking finally_, silenced her soliloquy. And thank the fucking lord, her thoughts about Bella and me!

Because if I had to scroll through, edit and delete one more vision of me, and _her_, in the buff, on a bed or in a woods or in my_ truck_ bed, all tangled up and for all intents and purposes fucking each other silly, my granite-hard cock was going to rip right outta' my jeans. And I'd already shredded enough clothes with my dick just thinking about the raunchy ways I wanted to do her…I could not handle the visuals!

Ricocheting time rocked and then became inanimate as soon as Jazz's lean legs bent out of the cab.

The space that held them apart disappeared in the thickness of the air whose muggy fingers stroked with wetness all over us.

Lilliputian, Alice. Leonine, Jasper.

Litmus test.

As if facing a firing squad, betrayed, Jazz's toffee eyesbore into mine with a look of begging seditiousness. Before he was magnetized by Alice.

Brought to his knees, the wafts and tendrils of earthen grime smoking around him. Pulverized.

Alice soared to him, a winged creature, stopping just short, and a handbreadth away. A breath apart.

I became invisible to them. An apparition.

A violent vignette of beauty, both beseeching, mutely, to each other. The energy between Jazz and Alice transmuted in fine thin wires through the air, lashing them closer to each other.

Chained.

Changed.

Altered in one moment of recognition.

Just one look!

If they had the liquid to cry I felt certain that the webbing of tears would have worn down their faces.

Two ancient souls, dirty, filthy, used up and limping across a wrinkle in time to this meeting place, this convergence, the crossroads; the meaning of it all suddenly became clear to Jasper.

To me.

A flare of pure awareness, this was the final step in Jazz's emancipation. As if his blighted spirit had been emaciated before, he was abruptly, fully, mesmerized to smithereens! Alice's acolyte, with her his follower for too many decades to ponder.

He grabbed her petite body to him and crossed the threshold, leaving me behind in my torment.

When their lips met I looked away. I was no peeping tom. Not in this instance at least.

She had called him Jasper. And in that single utterance and the way they were coiled into each other, hell bent and twisting upon the soil, I knew.

Our time was up.

_Fuck this!_

I'd had my fill.

Even my immature one-liners failed me as the eminence of their majestic love flailed me!

I was hungry.

I was famished for the sight of Bella. Fuck Esme's platitudes. Her adamant personal resolution that my helpmeet was only a stone's throw away. _Ha, didn't I just know it! _ I was appalled. Not sneering, as usual.

I felt sore and naked and I needed not to _feel_.

A ghoul. I didn't exist. And I hated now more than ever the hangdog look on Esme's visage lurking in my brain's framework. Seeing her in my mind, _Don't feel sorry for me!_

I had fallen so far from grace.

I was no longer funny.

I wanted to stop wandering.

Wondering.

I yearned for the sleep of oblivion.

Alice was the harbinger of hard times to come.

_This_, right here, was a crock of shit.

I couldn't go to Bella, not with panoramas of her open, soft-as-feathers, inner thighs fresh in my mind.

Not with Polaroids of _Jasper_ and Alice twining 'round each other like the rapacious weedy vines of honeysuckle, suckling, suctioning to each others' history.

Instead I skedaddled off to the gloam of the forest to meet Emmett. I shook my head at his unasked queries. There would be no discussion of this day.

Slapping me on the shoulder, looking askance lest he be in for a hiding, Em shoved a custom-crafted tungsten carbide horseshoe in between my fingers that were talon tight and tensed. We was about to bring down timber amidst the tumultuous thunderstorm that boomed over head!

Whizzing with accuracy, I loosened the load on my back. Lessened the commotion in my stomach as the boomerang-like metal shaved through an enormous oak. Sliced clean through, just like me. The wood we pillaged among the soldiering monolithic trees would furbish our cottage industry of firewood come the cold nights of winter as we played out our boredom.

"How 'bout them Cajun wolves?" Bubba hollered, like he was discussing The Bears.

_As if that was any better. _

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**A/N: Please review! I am not above begging. If you were scared of Alice, if you laughed your ass off, if'n you want to see Eddie walk the line with Bella, as he is dying to do, in the next chapter, and I defs want to know what you thought about Alice and Jazz's first collision…REVIEW.**

**Furthermore, come get your drawl on with Confeddie and his bawdy tawdry broads at the Dead Confederate thread on the Twilighted Forums! **www(DOT)twilighted(DOT)?f=33&t=4493&sid=475989c866c4e2841f8085524570f5d2** I give scrumptious mimosa-style teasers.**

**There's a pic of an Old Charleston Joggling Board on my profile.**

**Eddies and Bellies (Bellies, noms end on June 24****th****) and Indies(noms start on the 16****th**** of June) oh my!**

**Bellies: ****www(DOT)thecatt(DOT)net/tw/Nomination(DOT)aspx**

**Indies, give a nod to your lesser known fave fics and spread the word: **

**theindietwificawards(DOT)com/rulesschedule(DOT)aspx**

**Fave fics: always always, Broken Doll by RowanMoon (on Twi) and Bad Habit (both sites) by AmryMarie.**

**New picks and must reads: North Star Rising, by Spaniard, is on Twilighted and it is superbly resonant, desolate, and exhilarating. The Cygnet and the Strigoi is some kind of mad, surreal, wicked reimagining of Bella in Forks. It's friggin' monstrous! And on both sites (look for CapnSureYouAre on ff).**


	4. Evil Urges

**Evil Urges**

**Exciting news! The Fictionators recced Dead Confederates! Check it: fictionators(DOT)blogspot(DOT)com/2009/06/dead-confederates-by-golden-meadow(DOT)html**

**To my bitchin' beta V, **_**you told me so**_**, and I love you for it!**

**Thread temptresses, especially the other founding sisters of **_**Bad, Broken and Dead**_**, I know you've always got Eddie's back (slags)! There are many shout-outs and downright ravaging of your words in this chapter…you'll know it when you see it.**

**Claudia, you never fail to clear the cobwebs from my brain-mess.**

**This one is for Mer though. Wise and youthful, she leaves foot prints of poetry in her wake. Go to my profile to read her luscious summary of DC's!**

**Disclaimer: Eddie ain't much into humble pie, but it has to be said that I own nothing Twilight related. However, ConfEddie **_**owns**_** me!**

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The crowds tossed and parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Only we were an ocean of dead.

The Boone Hall Strawberry Festival was our Sunday outing. The dregs of the human populace were in attendance, and then there was us.

Imperious, arrogant, otherworldly and even more inherently wrong with Alice impounded between us. Impugned, by me.

Fucking stupid human shit-for-brains should have been scared witless. Well, the ass-hats _were_ witless, just not in the right way.

Stepping aside, jolting as if touched by live wires, people tore up the rich loam to the left and right of us as we made our way through the gate and past the grandstand.

_Shee-it_, we was trying to be inconspicuous, but that was pretty much a moot point with Alice storming ahead, desolately twirling her parasol made of tattered tufts of tulle, followed by Jazz, her lackey -- _least that's how I saw it_. Black, black, shark white, and more black. Alice in her funereal garb spelled a death knell. Bitch needed to take her Morticia Addams routine down a notch, pronto.

Fueling even more Sunday morning après-church scandal were Bubba and Rosalie. Apart, they were sort of innocuous, they could work the southern-bred twang to their liking and had all and sundry lapping that shit up. But together they were combustible. An image of hot predilection that was too bright for this weekend's jaunt.

Fuckers were too nonchalant and not careful enough! The new "us" was going to get us trapped in a cement-blocked, musty, rank-smelling prison of our own making.

Last but not least were Esme and Carl. Dolled out in her frippery, Esme alone charmed the bunch of inbreds with her genuine smile while Carl loitered at her side, his hard-working man's hand lingering at the lowest point of her back as he spat his gnarly cigar tab to the ground.

I yearned for the days of old; just last Thursday when all I felt was thirst and starvation, apathy, and the bonds of a hell-raising life that I could deal with.

The stopping and staring, the ideas in their heads were too much. I dropped my eyes, caramel with last night's feasting, to the tumble of murk and grim grime that wept over my boots. I _hated_ this new life.

The silence was resounding but did not make its way to their minds that were slap-dashed with gossip-whoring.

Ever more persistent were the dowdy housewives' call to my well endowed cock! Their partiality for my rough and renowned nasty tendencies was crawling all over my snowy body; my scowling face said it all.

Impertinent. Attempting imperviousness to the sideshow we were creating.

Human flesh rolled aside like waves. We Cullens had made our grand entrance.

_**~~ll~~**_

The previous evening had found us at Esme's beck and call. Insisting that Bubba do it all proper-like, _his first date with Rose_, we had all been summoned to the homestead.

The night started out a treat with Esme lampooning Rose in an embrace that shocked the shit out of the statuesque blond. I chuckled mightily at Esme's attempt to put her at her ease; I could literally see her thumbing through the articles of etiquette guru Emily Post until she lit upon an _appropriate _topic of conversation. "Now, child, I desperately need to replace my warshing machine; these boys here sure do make a mess of their clothes and mine has been rattling and walking all over the laundry room floor! You familiar with _the machine?"_

Oh. Hell. Yes., _here we go_.

A quizzical, upraised eyebrow from Rose, "Pardon?"

"You know, _The Machine_. Computers! Ah don't like these new fangled contraptions, the _innernet_,"--Esme shuddered at that word-- "but I need someone to check some price quotes for me, and I'm especially int'rested in what people have to say on those customer reviews. Would you be willing?" and Esme flapped her hands around and batted her eyelashes as if she didn't know that as a fellow vampire, Rose was naturally immune to her coquetry.

Snuffing out a snort, Rose held it together, _just _long enough to answer, "Yes, Miss Esme, I am _familiar with the machine_. I'm sure I can help you out."

Arriving shortly afterwards, Jazz and Alice made the rounds. Although not clapping with glee at first meeting, neither were Rose and Alice--diametrically opposite--desperate to tear each other apart. There was no love lost, but neither was there blood drawn; total indifference.

Esme came out of the kitchen with everyone's drink du jour. Branch and bourbon for Carl and Jazz, beers for myself, Bubba, and Rose, a triple vodka tonic for herself, and nothing less than arcane, poison green absinthe that sloshed beneath a water-drizzled sugar cube for Alice. _La fee_ _verte_, The Green Fairy, _of course._

I'd caught Mistress Not-So-Lily-White-Light-of-Fingers scoping out Esme's trinkets. Having been warned by yours truly, Esme took it upon herself to head Alice off at the pass. Breaking out the good stuff, Esme presented _the girls_ with tokens of her hospitality, wrapped in crinkled newsprint, and lashed together with twine and, _lo and behold_, brand-name baggies secluding baubles of unnamed wealth!

I rolled my topaz eyes at Esme's generosity, and then outright laughed at the _young ladies'_ discomfiture!

"Now, dears, I won't take no for an answer! They're just sercies, keepsakes. Please, I want you to have them," Esme's soft, soulful twang rustled over the words as she watched Rose and Alice unfold and take out two invaluable, glittering, golden pieces of Cullen family history.

At the open window, I felt the hot licks of the sultry breeze; the world was shifting beneath the impenetrable heat and it felt delicious against my frozen wasteland of skin. It was like being inside of a convection oven, trying to escape the tangent entanglement of Jazz and Alice. The barest skimming of their arms and fingers and thighs palpated with crackling energy that filled the room with atmospheric phosphorescence. I was disgusted and entranced by their primordial ooze. How could Jazz fall so far off his _fuck-it-all _ways so quickly?

They fucking hurt my eyes so much that I was squinting at the thawing, cold, collision of friction between them.

I turned back from the sunset that was all muted tones, my hackles raised, when I heard the one word bound to set me off, aloofly pronounced by the one woman destined to be my malevolent executioner, "_Wolves_."

My mouth was so fixed I could hardly bite out the words, invested as they were in bile, "What do you know about the Creole shapeshifters?"

Alice tightened her eyes into slits and glowered at me, determined not to answer.

"That's what I thought, sister. You don't know shit from shinola!" I had paced into the middle of the room. Alice was directly in front of me and all the other occupants had dissolved into the background.

I felt like it was high noon and we were in the dim, tumbleweed depths of a saloon. A standoff of oddities.

With little encouragement, I would happily tear her limb from limb and then light the flames beneath her fragmented body parts, but for Jazz who was reclining coolly on the sofa, toothpick lolling around his mouth and clacking against his teeth, the only noise to crack the tensed hush. He felt no need to protect his woman; she was a force to be reckoned with in her own right.

Tilting up onto tiptoes, Alice's gleaming incisors were inches from my neck, "And you do?"

A showdown.

Strangling the urge to wrap my hands around the length of her neck, I jeered, "Can you even see into their futures, you fucking precognitive bitch?"

A harsh laugh spilled from Alice's lips that had just met face with my own brother, her neck arched back before she controlled the vitriolic cackling to parry, "What of you, you _psychic prat_? Can you read Jacob's mind?"

That sobriquet set my teeth on edge and adding _his_ name to the mix was the straw that broke the vampire's constraint! I whirred my head forward and snapped, "_YES."_

Recoiling as if from toxin dripping from a black mamba's fangs, in an nth of a second Alice hit the partition that separated the useless dining room from the front parlor, her tiny face bleached even whiter, a rusk of sound, "You shouldn't be able to. Not even Aro can-"

Hisses, like the steaming piss of a mustang hitting the cakey, chalky, desert earth erupted from my throat at the mention of Aro. I crouched and began my stalk towards the phantasmagorical figure in the corner.

"ENOUGH!" That tenorous boom from Jazz, his lethargic voice raised as I had never heard it before, halted me in my tracks. Unfazed but still startled, Alice slid towards him, never once taking her eyes off my lethal stance.

Adopting his sonorous grandfatherly tone that meant he was all about business, Carl asked, "Aro can't what?" All pretenses dropped. This was no good old boy charade; Carl had been knee deep in shit with the Volturi for too many centuries to count.

Listing into Jazz's side, almost supine in the way her resilient form melded with his, Alice's voice echoed the deadened reaches of her widened eyes, an empty husk, "Nothing," shaking her head determinedly and effectually cutting off all further interrogation. Pissed-off Esme reminded me that this was a _meet and greet_ and not an inquisition as she totted out another tray of platelets warmed to room temperature in thick, glassy, jam jars.

I was unwilling to stop. Going at her nonverbally, I sought the key that would get me through the barred gates of Alice's demented head. Like taking a battering ram to the fortified walls of a citadel, I was unable to find sturdy purchase in her mind, but it went without saying that Jazz had found a steadfast, studly toehold in her _minge_. _Motherfucker_. Aro, Caius, Marcus…they were like the Brothers Grimm of the vampire world and I fucking needed to know what Alice had hidden in her lockbox!

Licking a tassel of blood from her plump lips, Alice pissed me off one step further, "Esme, I mean you no disservice when I say this, but if you don't convince Eddie to give up his attempts at mind-rape, I will have no recourse but to leave this soiree."

Shrilly, "Edward, there will be no more talk, or _thoughts,_ of the Volturi or the wolves tonight; now mind your _p's and q's_, boy!"

"But this is fucking hogwash! She knows something, Esme!" I wheedled away even though I knew what was coming next.

"Don't you sass back! And you will call me _ma'am_ in this here household!"

Clearing her unclogged throat, Rose seemed to think this was the opportune time to inveigle her way into Miss Esme's good graces. All sweetness and smiles, she rose from her perch on Emmett's knee (that was jittery as a dog in heat and bouncing her around like a trampoline), "Ma'am-"

"Oh no, sweetie, just call me Esme," spinning about and grasping Rose's well-manicured hands within her own.

_FUCK! _

"Yes'm, I mean, _Esme_," bitch smirked and glanced at me as if I was no more than a kid in the time-out corner, "Is it all right if Em and I take off now?"

Although the evening settled down after that, I remained unsettled. Bubba toddled off after Rose, while Alice and Jazz shit-chatted with the folks. I stood at the window, following shots of blood with bottles of Beck's.

Cryptic, cunning, and calculating. Alice. I couldn't resist a final volley as she crossed to the screen door; I whispered near her ear, "Seems like you and the wolves have a lot in common, being all full of hex and all."

Not to be outdone, Alice retaliated with, "Sleep with dogs and you're gonna wake up with fleas…you should ask Bella about that," her parting simper said it all, insinuating that Bella was in bed with the cuntish cur, in more ways than one.

_**~~ll~~**_

"It's squirrels gone wild!" Emmett hollered through the cloying, humid, cumulous dimensions of the night. The conflict reaped from the earlier discussion of wolves and the like was forgotten. My diabolical reaction to Alice was unmentionable. I was pardoned by Jazz, but was still smiting beneath that ghastly _something_ that was smoldering within her.

The minor, easily-squished creatures scampered at our fatal approach, our quiet tread only broken by Emmett's bellow. Christly little cunts on spindly legs, how I longed for the untamed puma on our forthcoming trip to Florida. And alligators!

Not even waiting for the blood to digest, _lest we get cramps_ as Esme liked to scold, Emmett dove headfirst into the ludicrous, "So, yeah _Junior_, give us the skinny on your classic mini…what's she look like with her _top down?"_

Before he could control himself, Jazz sent unbidden images of the half-naked succubus and an unadulterated tsunami of lust straight through my cerebral cortex!

My dick that knew no bounds took on its Bella-bedding call in an instant! "Fuck, Jazz, I _do not_ need that shit!" My head hit the ground and I floundered against the chameleon call of all my evil urges while Bubba tanked his ass backwards into the hill and groaned beneath the assault of intense sexual desire! _Goddammit, he needed to cease and desist already!_

Slightly chagrined, Jazz hung his head, shook his sun-like curls over his face to obscure the sheepish I've-just-been-fucked-ten-ways-to-Sunday-and-then-some grin, "Sorry man."

"I ain't talking' about it. Emmett just caught me unawares," he sniffed and smiled, and that lifting of his lips that had met too many human arteries was suddenly of the cherubs. I couldn't fucking abide the sight of him all glorious, that hardened, rusted-out shell he'd been, a commandeer of death and a monger of wars, was now an iridescent layer of restoration all down to the web-weaving of crazy, obliterating Alice. Victorian met Antebellum and their relics perforated the stratosphere of time. It was a sort of sublimity I did not want to understand.

The fucking thing of it was that I felt nothing more than rigor mortis and desolation.

All fucking Doctor Phil-like, Jazz chomped on the toothpick clamped between his teeth – _where the hell did he keep that thing?_--put on his best professor face and I knew immediately that I was up shit's creek without a paddle if he was the one on point tonight, "So, Eddie, anything you'd like to discuss tonight?"

Fuck. I felt like I was at an AA meeting, but worse because this was a Vampire's NOT-Anonymous meeting, and the brethren were far too vigilant for their own fucking good!

"Go on, son; just lay it on the line. Trust, there are no secrets here," Jazz intoned in a serious voice. And cue the goddamn John Edward's _I'm a commercially-endorsed psychic_ theme song!

"So you already know-"

"Uh huh," Jazz cut me off at the pass, at that precise moment pretending insouciance while he dug some embedded grit out of his crusty fingernails.

"And-"

"Yup," Em corroborated, motherfucker better thank his lucky stars that he wasn't a 'P' popper else I'd have popped his guffawing jaw right quick!

Trying to keep a secret from these jackals was like trying to keep a thumbed-through, well-worn, and jazzed-over copy of Penthouse from Esme's prying eyes and olfactory senses!

Jazz, golden-haired weasel, was sporting a knowing smirk, and Bubba was gagging on his vaingloriousness that he held one over the _telepathic twat_ in the family.

Jazz, I couldn't get over him! Giving up his Free Range ways with just _one peek_ at the pilfering pixie, he couldn't resist a barb, "Don't worry, Eddie, we don't think of you as any more of a freak than you already are. Besides, it is commonly held that color-blindness is a rare gift, that it can actually enhance your ability to see through certain camouflages." Smug twat continued with his little lesson on daltonism, as if I didn't already know, "You might even say that it goes hand-in-hand with your other paranormal traits."

_No shit, panty stuffer, that's probably why I can see straight through your latest undying love muffet! _"Thanks fucktard, I feel so much fuckin' better already," I spat at the cunt.

To those of our kind, the colors of the night were crystal clear. Just not to me. Faded-out, latent hues that I sensed rather than saw, more akin to a human's faltering eyesight. Having been colorblind as a human – _thank you Elizabeth Masen, not only did you convince Carl to grant me hell on earth, you also sent me into this eternal hereafter with a disability _-- I knew nothing different but for the fact that this was one more glaring foible in what was purported to be a flawless body. And I still just hankered after X-ray vision!

"So, what you wanna know bro?" Em lounged back on the turf, released his buckle, tugged open the top of his button-flies, and shoved a hand in for a good scratch. "If Bella's pubes are as full of delicious red rays as the locks on her head?"

FUCK!

"Prick, I have Deuteranomaly…green weakness. I can see all the colors and twat-features, some of them are just washed out, like your fucking jokes." While I was enlightening Emmett, all I could think of was Bella's pubes, just crucify me now! Yeah, I was sure they were all sorts of glinting _alizarin_ amongst a nest of lustrous dark umber, though I would not be able to pick out that exact shade. The name itself spoke volumes. I had no doubt that her snatch would be a delectable vision.

"Dude-or-a-fuck-_what_?" Em's brow wrinkled as if he were contemplating quantum physics before he brushed his confusion away, "Eh, never mind. What about the fact that you want to eat her just as much as you want to…eat her_ out_? Bring it on, I got all night!" Bubba was full to bursting with jollity at my expense, didn't hurt that he'd had Rose's maven, mauvish lips wrapped around his dick as recently as an hour ago. "So, Bella is your LTC, huh? And you're going all girlie and think she's your _soul-_mate too? Now that's some messed up shit!"

"LT-what?" Goddamn, now he was talking in text messaging lingo!

Em pulled himself up onto one elbow, long beefy legs crossed over and dented his dense shape into the ample ground, "L.T.C. La Tua Cantante, duh-uh. Fuck you sure are thick for being the smart one of the family!"

Grizzly Adams Bastard. "Thanks, Bubba, but seeing as that whole _LTC_ thing didn't work out so well for _you_, I won't be needing your advice on all things blood and boudoir and Bella from here on out," I lunged to my feet and smacked my palms down the length of my lean thighs, preparing to sprint.

"Aw, I wouldn't say it didn't work out _for me_, if you know what I mean. Best tasting bouquet I ever had the pleasure of imbibing!"

"Duuuude," Junior intervened, he was so fuckin' chilled it was as if he'd come off a week-long pussy bender, "Alice said it would be all right. No harm will come to Bella through you."

I didn't give two shits what that haughty friggin' hobgoblin thought! I bit against the manacles of mellowness Jazz was shooting off left, right, and center.

Feeling little more than hen-pecked, yes, _hen-pecked_ by two larger-than-life vampires! Their comments, _and thoughts_, were piercing my mind and causing further decomposition of my manifesto to remain apart from Bella. They were ripping holes in my composure.

In the end I stalked off to Em's parting shot, "Hey Eddie, what you gonna' do if Bella's at the festival tomorrow? Think you can talk to her without tossing it in your jeans or stuttering like our pal Newton?" I flipped the carpet muncher and the reformed free-for-all cocksucker the bird. _When in doubt, give 'em the finger!_

_**~~ll~~**_

Strolling through the crowds along Boone Hall Plantation's frontage, their commercial fields running parallel to Highway 17 North as it meandered through emptiness and forests, to the oyster conclave fishing village of McClellanville, and further on to steel-working Georgetown, I pleaded with the fates to end this day already.

Unilaterally known as _America's Most Photographed Plantation_, I rolled my eyes as my nose flared at the pervasive, noxious fumes of manure from the brow-beaten horses pulling squealing youngsters and old timers alike on the endless loop of carriage rides, puffy, fried, sweet funnel cakes, and the sickly scent of sugar-infused shaved ice – _like a vampire on a shish kabob_. Congregations of unwashed masses. Perfumed sluts. Powdered old blue-rinsed women wrinkly with time.

The fertile, dark soil of the plenteous earth cascaded threads of grit over my Carhartts, turning the fawn suede to shit-heap brown. Flies buzzed and irritated me further. A cacophony of sound belted my ears; the live band, the ceaseless mortal nattering.

I felt groggy. What the cunt? Vampires do not feel _groggy_! I was dulled, and everybody else was lulled into a false sense of security. My back ached. My brain was sloppy.

I didn't know quite why we were here as Jazz and Em squired their tight-assed, new dead women through the mire. Mingling like it was St. Marcus Day in Volterra, Esme and Carl greeted and played nice with the locals.

With a holler that he'd catch us later, Em was off to the petting zoo. He vaulted across the teeming grounds with Rose suctioned to the side of his neck like a moray eel. Seeing the venom clinging to his grin, I felt the slimmest fear for the louse-ridden goats and bunnies. _But not nearly enough to stop him_.

I was here for one reason and one reason only.

I was about to go all Stanley Kowalski and start shouting, "BELLA!!!" at the top of my lungs!

The sultry heat soothed me just a bit. As it washed over my iceberg skin, I relaxed, released the crick in my neck with a crack, and opened my palms to roast in the sun's warmth. The frothy gurgle of human blood spilling from the pores of the fanfare families interrupted my enjoyment. I was hauled back to earth by the admiring stares of downright biscuits laden with gravy, hot, apple pie, horny, fair-going women. Mouths agape, eyes glazed over, they pillaged me with their scavenging leers.

Spite filled my eyes and caused me to squint at each bitch in turn, _No, No, FUCK NO – bitch was a leathery faced, smoked twenty a day, fifty year old Food Lion clerk – nonononono…_

Alice was in my head suddenly. I whipped towards her. Slaked all upon Jazz as if he was the antidote to her madness, she had him by the 'nads. Throughout the night, with all of us denizens of Luxury Hollows Trailer Park, we heard them as they were primal and greedy for the scent and feel of each other. Now, here, Alice was after something else all the while clawing and grasping and fondling Jazz up and down. She didn't need a sign, for their embrace clearly read "_Taken, so back the fuck up"._

Sizing up the denim-clad, muffin-topped, skanky, tank-wearing hordes, Alice reached effortlessly into my head and dropped Bella like a maraschino cherry into it.

_Plop._

_Yeeeees!_

I felt like I hadn't seen her in a coon's age.

I shirked off the immediate, unfortunate knowledge that Alice alone knew my last secret, _that I could not see even the tiniest bit into Bella's thoughts. _

Yards away, in the strawberry patch, picking a pint when she could just as easily have bought the fresh fruit from the surrounding stands. Bella's elemental scent was magnified beyond compare, even from this distance, and I was paralyzed. She was making a meal of me, she made me mental, and I was bitten through by mealy worms!

With Charlie at her side, keeping watch over the fuck knew _what_, Bella pressed the stems and lifted up the misshapen globes, munching on them on the sly with a pulpy, pink mess running down her pointed chin. The childishness of her actions made me smile. The wantonness of the red coating her lips made me hard.

As if my look beguiled her, Bella looked up and caught me watching from beneath the white tent of Hank's Soul Food. My worn Levis were hanging just below my hips, my T-shirt hiked up by the hand I rested at the frayed waist of my jeans. Bella showed not one smidgen of self-preservation as she slowly licked her lips and perused the slice of abs on show. Like a shoal, my stomach was rigid and jutting with muscle that tightened beneath her unhurried examination.

Earlier that morning, I had raked through the offal of filthy laundry that surrounded my bed. Esme was on strike from laundress duty due to my own filthy _did I want my mouth washed out with soap_ language at the previous night's aperitifs. Tugging out a less than rotten 'T' scrawled with "_John Deere, Dirt Magnet"_, I smirked now at Bella's appreciation of the view as the cotton hugged my wide shoulders and skimmed down to my waist.

Watching my conceited indifference, Bella allowed herself nothing more than a cool appraisal of me that had me wrapping my hands with brute force around the aluminum pole holding up the marquee.

Like a lynx, an exotic breed of human that had a death wish, Bella unperturbedly smiled at me. From my supposedly copper hair that was a sloppy tumble across my forehead, to my skin that was a cold clime shooting out prisms like a cubic zirconia, she took two steps in my direction. But I doubted my hypnotizing pull. My demon eyes wondered if she could see the hint of the monster threatening to crack through this brittle slate veneer of honky-tonk.

There was something lubricious, lewd, in her speculation. And still Bella roved closer, with me as her target.

I wanted to ravage her, feast upon her flesh, and work my manic way into her head that never quit sending off repeated nothingness. I was little more than the prey, hunted as she held my stare and sauntered towards me, Sheriff fuckin' Swan in tow. Surrounded by biddies and brood mares, and her nothing but a young, already been broken filly…every other woman here was mutton dressed as lamb. I was stranded, with her, alone in a foraging gathering, cornered. I felt nothing like a killer, garroted by this wolf in sheep's clothing. An infinite listlessness lapped Bella's wandering eyes, mahogany sharpening to shards of jet when they met me.

Relinquishing Bella's body, I focused on her father. It was time to man up, ha! Reaching across the one foot between us, I held my hand out to Charlie. Falling back on all of Esme's lessons, I cleared my throat and said, "Nice to meet you, sir," _Sir Dickface!_ If I was succinct, he was nothing more than taciturn as he curled his fingers over mine, "Likewise." Unaffected at the draftiness of my clasp, I couldn't resist grasping his large calloused palm more firmly than was necessary. A hardcore poker player, Charlie showed no visible reaction but his thoughts spoke volumes, _Boy you do that one more time and I don't give two shits who your momma and daddy are, I will one-arm you to the ground, _never once losing his placating smile that fell short of his doughy brown eyes_._ I tipped my head and sniggered, _In your dreams, Sheriff Shithead!_

I couldn't very well go balls-out in public with Bella, least of all with her father all sharpish on my ass, so I lingered within his head while I multitasked my ravenous eyes over his daughter's new apparel. Making small talk, I asked Swan about the latest Pit Bull fight ring in the Snowden community. Tetchily, he answered me with more monosyllabic utterances. _Yes, no, we are aware of the activity and looking into it…_ Boring git. His daughter was the charm around his neck, and she purveyed this odd exchange with a macabre delight.

Rugged, cracked like a hardboiled egg, and then bedeviled and defiled by his wife's cuckolding. A down home boy, born and bred, his past was subtle microfiche to my plundering perusal. About all I could wrangle of Sheriff Swan's history was that his wife had walked out on him with their bairn in tow. I imagined that'd be enough to break any man. I felt a reliable, rebellious union with this tough-as-nails, crotchety, clapped-out keeper of the peace even while I laughed at his expense.

Of an athletic build--probably convinced that he was taking care of himself when he worked out, even while he followed up his weight-lifting by slinging back cases of Miller High Life, that spew-worthy _Champagne of Beers--_he took his civic duties seriously. Ever itching for a good fight to let loose the testosterone. I knew how he felt. 'Cept I was bent under the fuel of venom.

As he surveyed the scenes playing out before him, Aw Shucks Chuck's expressions were many-paned, like a worn, handmade, patchwork quilt. He had guilt and a melancholic turn of expression that he had passed down to his only child. Oystering, shrimping, deep sea fishing, and crabbing, _Dad_ had his own life before Bella's surprise appearance. Initially, she had been less welcome than a palmetto bug scrabbling across the pockmarked, wooden floors of his kitchen! But word had it that Charlie had cleaned his act up some since then.

For the most part he had kept up his inner pact to be a decent father. That much I had gathered on my nightly visits to the Swan hovel, that thing _he_ called a house.

A shift of the sun's path and a brewing fracas with Em, not surprisingly, in the thick of things just like a frat boy, brought to the surface a fissure in the façade. Swan ambled off to the fray.

Leaving me and Bella alone.

Fidgeting from foot to foot was no longer a trick to appear more human. My voice was caught in my throat as I worked up the courage to say hello, peering at her like a dumb, mute animal.

I was about to turn on my heel and beat a hasty retreat when I heard her voice, succulent as the reeds swaying in the marsh, mouth watering, "Eddie, fancy running into you here," Bella took the bull by the horns, "I didn't reckon you for a strawberry-liking sort of man," and had already stampeded me. _Bella, if only you knew._

Plucky, teasing, the girl had spunk – just not the kind I wanted to discharge into her body..._yet._

The scattering grime settled. It licked wantonly against her hint-of-pink painted toenails. I wanted to be that muck upon her flesh. Eyeing the slight widow's peak at the top of her forehead, I leaned in for a long draught of her tresses, stirring the glossy sweaty tendrils. I just wanted to fold her up in me, cool her down with me, heat her up, "_Mmmm_, strawberries are my new favorite fruit, Miss Bella."

Well, that worked. Momentarily.

Aiming to regulate the ever-increasing flame in her body, like an overworked HVAC system with cooling fans malfunctioning, her strident breaths alerted me to her attention. Not able to read her mind, I could clearly understand the telltale signals of her physical reactions. Shirred within the gazelle-like brightness of her eyes was longing.

A map of mild blue highways transported the red tide at the topmost terrain of her tissue, leading in an unerring course down to the pendulous swells of her tits that were showcased in a buttery yellow sundress. I'd seen her in the dirty diner uniform and dressed for school but never in her Sunday Best! Smelling of wavelets and salt and tang rolling around with her own innate fragrance, she had recently been to the beach. The day of sun and sea had brought out a dusting of freckles across her pert nose; the shimmer of infinite crystals still stuck to her skin ignited a glimmer.

Suddenly, Bella resembled that changed image Alice had goaded me with!

All I could hear was a dirge as her racing eyes met mine. Lonely and all sorts of lovely. The shittiness of the family around her leaving her partly broken, and she didn't hide it. A breath of fresh air tearing all up and down me.

And then the flip side of Bella, the chimera, she was immediately shored up because of something she saw reflected in my own onyx-amber eyes. Jaunty and brazen and majestic and mocking!

What in my brooding expression had given Bella permission to flirt? Was she just not frightened at all?

As she stepped even closer, as if to brush her fingers down my arm, I swallowed the snarl that hid in the abyss of my torn up innards.

Preposterous!

Her eyes narrowed but she was not discouraged, "Won't you walk with me, Eddie?"

As if she knew me.

As if she would understand what I was made of. Nothing more than dust and venom and everlasting immortality and the desire to feed on civilian blood.

I was still trying to make sense of what she was about! During my routine rounds of following Bella I had cottoned onto three things.

First, the girl liked her fast food. Of a morning, Bojangles' Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits was her first stop for a country ham, biscuit, and hash browns With her ever-present sweet tea, chunks of ice forming the bottom three inches of her cup, tangy with the squish of a quarter lemon whose tartness was not enough to cut through the sugar. No fucking wonder she smelled so ungodly sweet! Every glass she drank was spiked with uncounted tablespoons of cane sugar!

Maybe if I could get her to lay off the tea the pull of her blood would diminish.

Wishful fuckin' thinking.

Secondly, she was far too fucking pretty for her own good. Practically hurdling over each other to get to her fastest, the boys at Wando made me want to take up dining from human flesh again. _Kids_, I thought, watching them pull into the high school parking lot, _you're nothing more than_ _Meals on Wheels_. Sassy, sexy, womanly, Bella was a bit standoffish and self-conscious with the brown-nosing teenagers. But not with me. Her smile, that simple, upturned tilt of her puffy suck-me lips about killed me every time she took my order at Momma Brown's, _Christ how I wanted her to take all of my orders!_

But I wasn't even sure she wanted me. Whereas I could spellbind any woman, any time, Bella appeared somewhat inured. I found myself bending over backwards, using all of my rough-hewn appeal to get a reaction from her.

Thirdly, Bella was bereft. In a manner I wanted to understand. I wanted to place all the disjointed puzzle pieces of Bella back together, but they didn't exactly seem ill-fitting as they were. And who the hell was I kidding anyway? I couldn't even repair myself. Didn't give enough of a shit to bother.

And I shouldn't give a goddamn about her either! I'd had many mortals; under my teeth and between my thighs. Hot, pliable, and thankful for my icy erection and my skill in fucking hard _and_ _slow_. I didn't _care_ about them. I fucked them or sucked them and then left them.

But in Bella's pure presence I was made soft. Of flesh and blood and needfulness. And that simply would not do.

My swagger was off-kilter; I was imbalanced as I allowed Bella to lead me to the tent where booth upon redneck booth elbowed for space amongst the din of roaring conversation, the jangle of spurs, the flip flops, plimsolls, dungarees, pedal pushers, clam diggers. I staggered into the table Bella projected me towards.

Fucking Department of Natural Resources! As if I wasn't having enough trouble sucking down the fumes of blood throbbing around me, now I had to face a tableau laid out with the dead ends of my nightly meals? Oh Fate, you fucking bitch!

Bella cut through the awkward silence by introducing me to Doug Dennis, who was manning the booth.

I rallied enough to snicker, "Now was that Doug Dennis or Dennis Doug?" Only in the south could your last name be your first! I outright laughed when Doug-Dennis-Doug replied, "Yee-ah."

_Team DNR, Good Old Boys, Good Old Toys._ Indeed. Pelts of foxes, coyote, and wolves were splayed before me and I thought the lazy bastards should pay me commission for keeping the wildlife population under control.

My laughs were cut short when Bella started caressing one of the wolf skins, _uh oh._ "Now this here, this just makes me sick."

So dead animals were fine and dandy when she had them mounted on her workbench, and she gave nary a thought for the poor little foxes lined up before us, but fuck with the wolves and you were fucking with Bella? I wondered what she'd think if she could see me in action, taking down beast after beast.

Like a _renard_, sly in her manner, almost coyly, Bella sighed, "Wolves are such majestic creatures, Eddie."

This reeked of trouble! _Was she fucking kidding me?_ What was her deal? Did Bella have a pact with the devil? Did she want me to kill her? Every utterance from her mouth about the unjustness of killing wolves and _blah fucking blah blah blah _was making me more and more pissed off. Obviously she had a fatal attraction for bad boys…did she have any idea just how evil I was?

I shot a parting glare at the canine corpsesas Bella carted me off to the ante-up games. _Shooting Gallery, yes!_ Now that was something I could get behind!

Around us were the carnies, the country bands jamming, people dancing, children screaming on the puny rides, and a belittling momma hushing her young one, "Quit that scratchin'! Them is just skeeter bites, baby!"

Guns N' Roses' _Welcome to the Jungle_ blared out from the back recesses of the makeshift shooting range. Taking center stage, taking slightly less than absolutely perfect aim, I hit the bullseyes one, two, three, four times. Bella didn't wince at the muffled crack of the toy rifle. Bella laughed that I'd won! I hit her with an unfettered smile that stopped short as we were handed the prize.

_Aw man! You've got to be fucking kiddin' me!_ A giant stuffed…._wolf_. This was worse than a crock of shit! Bella hugged the mangy toy to her tits and I had to clench my fists to keep from ripping its head off with my razor sharp teeth, visions of fluff flying everywhere was the only thing that returned a bleak grin to my lips.

"Thank you, Eddie! I've got to head off now, I've got a shift at Momma's, but I had a lovely time with you…._strange_, but lovely." This Bella was giddy. Hopeful even.

Oh hell. Shit no. Before I could even clamp my mouth closed, words such as I had never spoken stammered out, even while my eyes widened in shock at my query, "Bella," I cleared my throat, for real this time, sighed and let it out, "May I call on you?"

My eyes closed against what I was certain would be a dreadful reaction. A soft stroke upon my wrist, a little giggle, a breathy, "I'd like that."

My eyes slammed open, my mouth agape, I bit my tongue against the _Come again now?_ that wanted out! "Tomorrow night?"

"Yes, I look forward to it," and she leant up to press, like a whisper, her lips onto my cheek. "Bye, Eddie," again with the wicked grin, Bella turned and sauntered off. Hips giving a kiss to the air.

_What the fuck was that? _ Eddie didn't date!

Shaking my head, fighting my own grin, I strolled off in the opposite direction. Emmett was going to shit bricks!

_**~~ll~~**_

Alice had loaded the Bronco up with the appropriate gear; at least I assumed she had. _What the fuck was up with the roaming gnome? She was taking far too much interest in my un-loved life! _ I didn't bother checking as I didn't know what the hell to expect and I was already kacking my pants in my own immortal way.

Emmett's final words were ringing in my head, "She'll be pork pullin' in no time at all, and I'm not talkin' about barbeque either," he shouted in my ear, pounded my back and the shoved me out the door that was hanging off its hinges.

Fuckin' figures that Jazz just smiled, mellow as yellow, and shrugged, hauling Alice onto his lap.

I took the backroads to Bella's much more slowly than was necessary, giving myself time to think way too fucking much; I considered turning tail several times.

Bella was beautiful. Intricate and detailed and delicate. Brave and strong and true. Innately sensual, no amount of silicone or Botox, make-up or fake spray-tan would ever make any other woman hold a candle to her inherent gorgeousness that worked itself from the inside out.

She was horny as hell! And damn sure I'd had to toss a few off after my time with her at the Festival. Blisters were forming, if not on my untouchable skin, than within my erotic-fueled brain! Sex on legs, her disregard for appearances made her ten thousand times more fuck-worthy than hours of primping and preening. I wondered what she'd wear tonight. And here I was waxing philosophical about a girl. A woman bound to this earth!

Shit.

Broken-down Bella was hot. A total friggin' un-Eddie-able, edible jigsaw that I couldn't make heads nor ass of. And so sensual that she at once caused deviant tendencies and chivalrous reactions.

Beaten up by her past, just like her junk-heap of a truck, that much was evident.

And I was wound up tighter than a…_I don't know! Just fuckin' wound tight!_

Pulling up to the overgrown lawn of Chez Swan, I took a deep breath and made my way up the cracked concrete walk. Sheriff Shyster opened the door, grunted, and beckoned me in. I followed him to the kitchen that was smaller than Esme's closet. Sitting himself down at the ancient, scarred, wooden table, Swan motioned for me to follow suit. _You're a quiet motherfucker, aren't you!_ We had the same thought at the same time.

Nudging empties aside, I set my hands on the table. Charlie finished buffing his gun, loaded it, and held it _under the table_. Cans of cheap beer and shot gun shells toppled to the surface when Bella entered the room and we both stood up, nearly knocking the table off its crooked legs.

"Fuck's sake, Dad! Lose the gun already!" Bella scolded the Sheriff and he had the good grace to blush even while he thought _Bella, I'ma pistol whip his balls if he so much as lays a hand on you! _Ah, yes, he had heard all about me. Looking askance, I avoided both Bella's body and Charlie's eyes to release the quietest chuckle. _Fuckin' dare ya', Chuck!_

We made it out of the house without mortal wounding, though I did question my sanity as I rushed to hold the door open for her and then helped her up into the cab with my hand clasped to her warm jutting elbow. Looking down at me, Bella appeared tepid, her smile lukewarm. _Good._

_What's she wearing? What was with opening doors for her? What the hell had gotten into me? _ I punched the gas as thoughts whiplashed me, and Bella just rolled down her window, stuck her arm out and curled it into the wind that rushed by, a freed smile on her face.

Okay, one thing at a time. Jeans, tanktop, old Adidas. _Don't focus on her tits!_ Right. _Gah, stop inhaling her fragrance, numbnuts!_ Shit shit shit. I was steeped in the visual and the tantalizing aroma of blood and body. This would never work!

_Think of Emse._ Okay? Esme. Momma Esme didn't raise no fool. But I didn't know how to reconcile my gut-grinding desire for the trace of Bella's heavily laced blood with the fool hard erection thrust of my lust for her pussy. And worse, how to make it all fit in this un-fucking-fathomable need to protect her from any little danger that seemed destined to her by some magnetic bond. From the wolf, from whatever the hell was up with Alice, and most of all…_from myself._

I was so very, very screwed. Lewd thoughts battled with gallant ideas. And always blood. I didn't know whether to wine and dine her, wine and dine _from_ her, or just straight out 69 her!

My intentions wanted to be somewhat honorable. As much as they could be when I wanted to fuck this _Bella_ silly and then suck her dry.

She was going to kill me.

She didn't seem to worry about saving me.

_Maybe she wanted to die._

I looked over at Bella. Just an almost woman. She didn't want to die. Wouldn't want the hell that was all I had to give her.

Any day now I was going to scalp myself with my incessant hair-raking, blind myself from my interminable beating off, or break my nose so that it resembled Bubba's busted up promontory with my guilty, confused, frustrated pinching. _FUCK'S SAKE_, so very fucking tired. I needed to get some new tics. Or just shut the bitch outta' my head completely forever!

Pinching.

Pinching and rolling and forever pitching a tent at the mere thought of…_Bella._

We'd reached the bridge. It was time to break the ice, so to speak.

Gripping the steering wheel tighter so that the leather crackled beneath my palms, I released my muscles, one by one, from my inhospitable hunched over stance. "Bella," she seemed at ease, smiled and tilted her head towards me, "What brought you to South Carolina?"

The smile was erased, shuttered. Her body coiled inwards, tightening as if to spring. I hastily back-tracked and fuck me if my deep velvety voice didn't crack, "It just seems an odd time for such an upheaval, your last year of high school and all," I shifted towards her, draped a wrist over the steering column, gave her my full attention, wondered if _this time_ my attempts at entrancing her would work.

_Tool._

Bella's smile closed like a camera lens, the helix inside of her tightened. Reluctantly she began, "I'll give you the abridged version, Eddie, but just because I like you," she twisted in the bucket seat and met my sorry eyes. "Let's put it this way, my _mom_, if you could actually call her that, spent most of my seventeen years carting me from one state to another, following a dick-trail that always dead-ended. With me picking up the pieces. At the end of last year, she dropped me like a bad habit when she took up with a Bull Durham minor league baseball player…just _left me_ to follow him around the country. Ha! I should have seen it coming," her laugh left humor by the wayside.

Shaking her head, raising those spirited eyes up, a part of her had hardened, "So I hitched across the Mason Dixon line and then south. To Charlie. It was foolish, I had little more than the loose change in the pocket of my thrift store jeans, but I did it. I managed. And hell, I sure met some characters along the way!"

While I would give my left nut for one hour within her mind, I was thankful that I would never be party to that journey! _Jesus Christ!_ I had half a mind to track her mother down and crack her head in half! But not one bit of Bella begged pity, she was stupidly brave. Fuck me, I bet she could give even the Volturi a run for their money!

She blocked thoughts out of self-preservation, garbed in courage. I did the same thing instinctually, a knee-jerk reaction to the mind-numbingly banal thoughts of every Cracker Jack, Jimbo, and John, not to mention the Billy-Jean's and Bobby-Jo's threatening to make me beg with the Volturi for my demise.

We had something in common.

The mercurial drop and lift of my mood left me feeling like my barometer of blood, fucking, and good ol' times had bottomed out.

As we reached the plaza, I stole one more look at Bella. She was bobbing her head to the new guitar anthem of _Aluminum Park_and humming along, a secret smile upon her mouth. I almost reached out to skim along the line of her cheek. Instead I jumped out, gathered up the cooler and lawn chairs, and escorted Bella onto Marion Square.

Downtown Charleston, the Holy City, _HA!_, a pilgrimage stop for tourists far and wide, I was surrounded by steeples. Roman Catholic, Huguenot, AME, Episcopalian, you name it, Charleston had it, including vampires, and now, wolves. A haven for rum-running pirates, a haunted town whose ghosts walked the streets side by side with the residents, Marion Square sat plum in the middle of this cobblestoned, Cabbage Palm-lined metropolis.

I set up the chairs, righted the cooler, settled Bella in her seat, surrounded by a crowd of lambs to the slaughter. Out of my element, my long-forgotten fatalistic tendencies were undergoing a rebirth just as my interred 17-year-old dick found resurgence.

It was Movies in Marion Square, an annual showing of old and new films. The trailers began as twilight fell over the sky's dome. And I almost snapped the aluminum frame of my lawnchair in half at what was playing on the silver screen. _American Werewolf in London…the remake!_ Jesus H. Christ, enough was enough already!

I let out the frozen breath in my impermeable lungs as that torture ended. Only to be staked afresh as the actual friggin' movie reeled up. _Christ on a cracker! From Dusk 'Til Dawn!_ Having not even checked what movie was playing, I probably deserved this hangman's punishment, _but still._ Alice had known, _'course she had_. This was conduct unbecoming of a lady, and for damn sure I used that term loosely. No wonder berserker bitch had been almost gleeful as she pulled me aside to suggest this as a first date!

_Fuckin' A._

Of course the movie was Tarantino and Rodriguez at their most tongue-in-cheek – _now why they had to ruin the genius by making it an overlooked trilogy was beyond me…daft cunts, you gotta' know when to fold 'em – _combined with Keitel, Clooney, and Cheech! How many times had Bubba, Junior, and I watched it, tanked up on trash, putting ourselves in the roles of Razor Charlie and his _compadres_? Busting a gut over the fangs, the gore, the goddamn _Gecko brothers_, and Clooney shouting about keeping a "_low profile"_. That Hollywood twat with his monkish haircut didn't know the meaning of low profile!

But what the shit was Bella going to think?

Morbidly, I slouched lower in my chair, not even daring to look at her.

Far too close to us, a pseudo-intellectual, circle jerk of Jesus-sandal wearing pansies were _deconstructing_ the pop culture genius of Tarantino while _tweeting _on their combustible iPhones. _Tweet-tards. _The meat puppets were ruining my viewing pleasure! What a fucking palaver.

Just then Bella crowed out with a robust laugh! Straining towards the screen I saw Salma Hayek doing her Pandemonium, python-wearing striptease. Through a burst of juicy giggles, Bella gasped, "Oh hell, _she's doing a Britney_!" That fucking full throaty gurgle, the overt joy and amusement pulsing from Bella made me sit up straighter. Wildly enticed and delighted by her merriment over the farcical fiendishness of this film, I was heartened by her silliness. Her acceptance. She showed no fear of monsters. _What if..._

No.

For now I would just lean closer, and pull her hand into mine. The warmth of her fingers curling around mine shocked me. Lullabyed me through the end of the movie.

A good-night song crescendoed with the blankness that stole over the projector after the final credits. _What the hell is this now?_ Couples were getting up as slow music killed the crickets' din and filled the air.

Bella rose, held her hand down to me, licked her lips into a moist smile, "I just want to try one thing."

_So I watch you thru the bookcase- imaging a scene:  
You and I at dinner, spending time, then to sleep.  
_

_  
And what then would I say to you- lying there in bed?  
These words, with a kiss, I would plant in your head…_

I went limp with longing and stiff as a marionette as she pulled the strings that brought me to my feet. The music was acoustic and sweet, and unlike me. Her hands hunted up over my chest and into the hair at the nape of my neck and she ignored my rigidity. Forging against me, I felt her breasts. Soft as pillows that I oft daydreamed about sleeping against. Sensual beats loosened my arms, my legs bent into hers. I held Bella. We twined together, twirled, in tune. My hands scavenged over her punishable back and landed, one upon the base of her spine, the other cascading against the side of her neck. Lowering my face to her, the air of her swilled into my being. Swelled me. My, "_Mmmm,"_ blanketed her in coolness and all the desire I never intended to convey.

A small pelt of breath scraped the crook of my neck where her lips rested, "Feels so good," the words letting the tip of her tongue stopover against my skin.

Satisfaction, yearning, and wanting. Melting. Hardening. Not even a kiss, I pulled back and held my mouth scant millimeters away from hers. Just inhaling and exhaling each other.

My silvery-white, antimony skin was made frail and my goner soul breakable beneath her scorching, stroking, delicate hands that strolled all up the bare, sleety skin of my arms. Cool drafts waffled out of me, plucking up and puckering her nipples to my discreet meandering gaze.

Initiating. Insistent. Almost _tasting_.

Specks of flint sparked from my eyes, glowing as the minerals in a damp grotto.

We were antipodal. Bella, fresh and sage, with me, old and dead and wizened.

_What is it inside our heads that makes us do the opposite?  
Makes us do the opposite of what's right for us?  
Cause everything'd be grrreat... and everything'd be good...  
If everybody gave... like everybody could._

I was too vulnerable. And as her incinerating touch told its stories upon the flesh of my biceps, I shook my head and stepped back.

Capable of her death.

Culpable of wanting her in all the worst ways.

In direct contrast to every other mortal I'd ever met, Bella met my frown. With unasked questions of her own: _Who was I? What was I? _

The problem was that her call was already too mystifying! I'd set down my diktat; her blood and body would be my downfall. Bella was off-limits.

Yet Bella could be my antigen. For many more reasons than I cared to admit**.**

"I can't touch you like this, Bella, not right now." Fuck. Now she was probably going to think I was a faggot or something! "And…"

Meeting the querulous semi-circle of my lips with a quirk of her eyebrows, like an ampersand, "And?"

"_And_, you are far too tasty for your own good," I licked my lips with infinitesimal languor and felt my mouth part under Bella's rapt scrutiny. The clangor of her heartbeat shifted into overdrive. Like pluff mud, quicksand, she was towing me under.

With that I hastened to get her back to holstered-up Charlie as quickly as possible! The drive back was too long, the cab's cavernous air thick with the greasy ambergris of everything I wanted to do to her. Throughout the night my orbs had turned to bitumen, black and sticky as tar. Ambiguous tenterhooks pillaged my frozen-solid flesh where Bella's touch had burnished me.

Her eyes had been wide as saucers; the whites of them shining like the blue plate dinner specials she served up on thick, white, chipped plates at Momma Brown's, ringing around deep earthen pools of twinkling brown…all overshadowed by desire that deigned to meet self-deprecation at my sudden denial.

Upon the steering wheel, my knuckles were bleached shards of flesh and bone, and Bella changed again. She was not intimidated. She sat back, her right arm again flying out the open window. Satisfied with something.

I slammed on the brake and threw my arm across Bella's chest when the force rocked her forward. Remembering Esme's lessons in southern courtesy as if by rote, I left the vehicle, loped in front of the steaming hood, never once unleashing Bella from the vice-like visceral grip of my eyes. Opening her door, I reached across her body to free her from the belt. Holding her in my sights, justified by the play of sex and smarts and wickedness, only a tidge touched by naiveté upon her face, I hauled her into me.

I was _not_ going to be a crusty old stick in the mud!

I swept my arms all over her. Put my mouth on her jaw. Swallowed a snarl. Pacing away, I backed up the steps of the Swan household, linking her fingers inside of mine until they brushed the tender skin where digit met palm.

I could have died right then.

Beneath the pool of blaring light on the porch, the boards creaking beneath my feet, I lifted Bella's elbow to my mouth. Stole my tongue along it. She tossed her head and ripped me closer until our lips were again near to touching.

_Just fucking do it, Eddie!_

Bolstering myself against her, I ran my tongue over those saccharine lips. A current shot straight down to my balls. And I wrapped myself all around Bella, ruched her legs, arms, hips, and tits against me as I snookered over that mouth. Once. Twice. Side-swiping. before giving in to hunger. I pulled her pouty lips into mine, sucked them! Bella clamored around me and I had to remember that I did not want to kill her…_not yet._

Our tongues touched and sparks tore me up! Both gasping, we broke apart. A half-human pretzel of body parts. Bent into each other. Two quick, licking, thrusting kisses and I had to jump away, I was that close to all of my inhuman urges!

In three seconds, I was back to myself. Nearly. Bella was a hot mess. I had to get the fuck out of here.

I led her to the door, opened it, prodded her inside and shushed away the confusion with a tease of my mouth against her ear, "Don't let the boogeyman bite, Bella." That would be my final warning.

The growl of the engine cranking up to high gear drowned out the roaring string of cussing that coursed out of me, "_Motherfuckin'sonuva_bitch_!"_

I couldn't drive away from Bella fast enough, couldn't deny the polaric pull between us, and couldn't stop the picture of her as _one of us_ from replaying in my head. Astonishingly, the idea didn't outrage me, _not one bit!_

Stopping two miles out from her house, I charged out of the truck. Only one thing would fix this short-circuiting. Blood. Blistering, fresh-from-the-veins blood! I needed it now to end this thinking. Thinking that there was only one way I could have her. And that was far too tempting to even contemplate.

Sniffing at the still air, I smelled them. Crashing through the dense underbrush, the leafy overhanging ceiling, I bolted towards them. Baring my bicuspids, I slinked closer. Crouching down, I was at their necks before the wind of my movement caught up with the sleek fur on their backs. Two at a time. A buck and his doe. The fawn looked on. _She was next._

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**A/N: Eddie wants to get some shit off his brawny chest. He's writing a oneshot outtake this weekend. It won't be long, you will fucking laugh. Wanna' peer a bit more closely into what goes on in that beautifully dirty mind of his? Put me on alert.**

**Last call, go vote for your fave authors: The Bellies, ****www(DOT)thecatt(DOT)net/, voting starts July 15th and The Indies, ****theindietwificawards(DOT)com/, voting is July 6th – 13th.**

**The music is on my profile…song for this chapter was Evil Urges by _My Morning Jacket. _The entire albums rocks! Aluminum Park, and the song in Marion Square, Librarian, are also theirs.**

**Thanks for all the reviews last chapter…and gosh, a lot of alerts and faves; won't y'all send Eddie some sweet nothings in the form of a review? He gives _good_ reply ;). Um, heck, for all that tweeted (yes!), live journaled, wrote somet on your profile about this story…I am beyond staggered! And yes, Rebelward now tweets.  
**

**The Twilighted thread for Dead Confederates can be found in AU, come and experience some true southern hospitality! I've just realized that none of my links in previous chapters work, so just come find us already…we're uber chatty and usually on the first page.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Y'all I know it's really shitty to do a fake-out, but I wanted to get my begging in before the end of the next round of Indie voting and chapter five won't be up until Sunday night (I promise, it's worth the wait!). **

**Now, keep reading because there's a teaser at the end!**

**Two of my stories have made it to the final round of the Indie Awards and I'm ridiculously excited! PLEASE VOTE for your favorite authors, this contest is important because it showcases lesser known fics with fewer reviews. Your votes are extremely important. **

**Dead Confederates**** is nommed for Best Alternate Universe WIP, Best Characterizations (non Edward/Bella) WIP, Best Use of Comedy WIP, Most Original Story Line WIP**

**Comeuppance**** is up for Best Characterizations (non Edward/Bella) Complete, Best Use of Comedy Complete, and Most Romantic Moment Complete**

**VOTING is from 7/22 - 7/26.  
**

_**www(dot)theindietwificawards(dot)com**_

**Link on my profile.**

**Or, you know, if you don't like Rebelward enough go vote for your faves anyway! There's a lot of good shit out there that needs some love ********.**

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Now, a chapter five tease by way of apology:

_I veered straight back onto my Harley, waiting for the others to follow._

_Alice and Jazz were bookends of black leather wearing denizens of ash. Raising herself onto the saddle of her black 2009 Kawasaki Ninja, she screamed it into life. A futuristic Mrs. Frankenstein. _

_Lowering himself into _The_ OCC POW MIA Tribute Chopper, a piece of machinery that was just as ordained to be his as were the shiny luminous scars that littered his blemished skin all up and down his body, Jazz smoothed his hand over the polished bars like it was his long lost lover. A slim snarling piece of technology that was raw with its glints of barbed wire viscera and the winking spade nested in the backrest. Its gravelly voice spoke of chainlink fences, spikes and torture. _

_Clad in jeans, claiming he wasn't pussy enough to wear leathers, not like that pansy-fied Jim Morrison, Bubba leapt onto his Yamaha Star VMax. Twin champagne colored exhausts curled out from his knees as his feet rested on the treads, and the giant horn of plenty muffler kicked up from his heels. He was grinning, on fire for the bike and the fight to come, thinking, "Helllo my horny of plenty, how I've missed you!" Rose hiked her skirt up, the suede lacings on either side baring a good slice of skin, and sank in behind Emmett. _

**Just so you know, there are more teasers on the Dead Thread, AU, Twilighted Forums. Come say hi and knock a few back with us!**

**Go read Rebelward Without a Cause; it's a separate story of outtakes and you can find it on my profile.**

**Next chapter will up by the end of the weekend! Cheers!**


	6. Smokin' Guns

**Smokin' Guns**

**A/N: Breaking News! Dead Confederates has made it to the final round of The Indies in the following categories: Best Alternate Universe WIP, Best Characterizations (non Edward/Bella) WIP, Best Use of Comedy WIP, Most Original Story Line WIP. In addition, ****In addition, my Comeuppance is also through for Best Characterizations (non Edward/Bella) Complete, Best Use of Comedy Complete, Most Romantic Moment Complete. ****I am stoked! Voting is 7/22 - 7/26. PLEASE VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE FIC/AUTHOR. Link is on my profile and ta to all that nom'd my stories.**

**Special big thanks to V, my delicious beta for not only her editing expertise, but also the suggestions for the bikes.**

**Dead Thread girls…you know I use you up and love your for it! Your words, thoughts and smuttiness all find their place in my dribble. You'll see it and know it and I thank you!**

**DISCLAIMER: SM owns Twilight, etc. But Eddie, this Deadneck, he belongs to me and the double wide of my imagination.**

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We were knocking a few back of a torrid evening. On the porch couch,

Em scratched his chest and fingered a tender spot, thinking, _Goddamn woman's a viper!_, followed by a god-awful stupid fool's grin on his face. He pushed his hand into the cubes of ice within the cooler at his feet and pulled out a packet of plasma.

The scratchy surface of the wiry filaments rasped over the muscles of my shirtless back as I searched for comfort. Torpid. Crushed and cracking, the railing complained beneath our propped-up feet. Mosquitoes were zapping. Having hauled out the old black and white RCA, we'd shoved beer bottles aside inside of the grill and nestled the TV under the hood. Watching the brain death that passed as World News, an inane combination of entertainment gossip, ever-growing health crises, and the occasional blip of international happenings lest the American public actually be allowed to think, I stifled a fucking yawn. _A yawn!_ Life was pressing its unwanted weight into my being.

No longer an etude in ennui, Junior's head was filled with quiet floating images of Alice as he sat on the bottom step, elbow perched behind him atop the rickety splintering wood, contemplating constellations that were yet to appear.

A girlish gleeful giggle that I hadn't heard before toppled out of his mind and met the distinct knocking of a red-crested Pileated Woodpecker as it rooted into a rotten live oak in the yard.

Bella was a snowy egret. Willowy. All legs and graceful neck. Creamy shades and soft as feathers. I felt hollowed out, concave by the persistent craving. I hadn't seen her since I'd deposited her safely back in her house with my sarcastic advice to beware of monsters.

Three days and I was a decaying mess.

I would go to Mama Brown's tonight.

A barrel of laughter belted from Bubba as he choked on a clot and pointed at the television, seized by paroxysms of gore and hilarity!

Governor Sticks-it-in-a-lot-of-pie Sanford. _Welcome to my world._

Incapable of speech, Em threw his empty at Jazz's head and motioned for him to join us. With a doting smile, the golden-haired boy moseyed up, smashed his fist into Emmett's pugilist's nose, and then settled between us, arms stretched out along the back of the sofa.

"Well, hello Guvna Suck-my-dick Sanford! Where ya' been? Those Appalachians treat you well," Jazz commentated and Bubba congratulated him with a noogie.

As soon as his national confession began, minute crocodile tears and all, we were all rolling around the cushions. _Thank you, mega-fuck-up Mark for your diversion, and we shall call you 'Governor Scrotford'. _Self-purported family man was really just about jamming it into the next available space!

"He didn't even go north of Vagina, he was headed _south_ the whole time! Appalachian trail my ass!" Em hollered across the wasteland that was our lawn.

A strident blab woke the phone in the living room as someone tried to reach us.

Em cursed, irritated at the interruption to our night's amusement, "Who the hell?" and galomped into the trailer, returning half a second later trailing the stretched, out-of-shape phone cord still attached to the nicotine-stained floral wallpaper. Holding it an arm's length from his ear, he lounged onto one leg, rolled his free finger around the air to imply _crazy_ and mouthed, "_Esme."_

Apparently she forgot we all possessed superhuman hearing because she was shrilly yelling down the line, "Remember how we were all worried about our MIA governor?" _Yes, Esme, yes. We were slightly concerned that his disappearance could look like a high profile killing to the Volturi, the Godfathers of Doom and Gloom. _ A veritable shriek followed, "He's on The Television! Turns out he was with his _fancy woman_." She whispered the last bit as if she had actually said _slut_ or _whore_. "The best part is, _apparently_, he's _tweeting_ about it! " And then again with the whisper, "Boys, what's this _twitter_ business? It ain't that damn innernet thingamajig again, is it?"

I clapped a hand over my mouth and Bubba closed the receiver in his paw, Jazz was already convulsing on the floor!

Still muffling the phone, Em managed to garble out, "Let's tweet toot sweet!"

Dinglehoofer Sanford. If you can't keep it in your pants, at least keep your fuckin' adulterous mouth shut when it's been all over another woman's chalupa! What alternate universe was this that a man's dickin' around on his wife was cause for national coverage? Only in politics, I swear to fuck. Ostensibly, infidelity was grounds for impeachment…_nearly_! Yeah, Clinton, I hope it was worth having Harmonica do the suck and blow on that cigar stub of yours! I still couldn't fathom how Buck managed to scrape his flatulent ass out of that peccadillo. But I had a healthy respect for the philanderer, the misguided minge licker. Apart from his taste in women.

Now, the Missus Mark Sanford, she was a cougar I'd like to sink my dink into!

Esme was still prattling on, _and fucking on_, when she was cut short by the the _bleep bleep_ of the phone. Em pulled a face, made the sign of the cross, grinned and countered, "Sorry, maw, call waiting! I'll call you back."

Her shriek was full of spleen, "Don't you cut me off, Bubba, I don't even care if it's-"

Ah, blessed silence.

Moments of forgetfulness.

Moments that were not long enough.

It was twisted sister. Alice.

She had been touring around the long dead of Charleston. St. Michael's Episcopal Church, ashes to ashes, scarlet flowers and death. Soaking up the swills of desecration and nosing around the cemeteries of dead confederates, constitutional co-signers, and political giants alike. Francis Kinloch, Mordecai Gist, Thomas M. Wagner. Jazz with his Hunley submarine addiction and her with her funeral stalking; even I had to admit that they were a match made of the very fountains of heaven and the geysers of hell.

Even the imp's tribute to the River Styx was cut short. Not by shanking-it Sanford. We were paralyzed amidst the ruins of our earlier tomfoolery.

Nomads were on the move. Towards us.

Fifteen minutes later found us convened at casa Cullen in Cainwhore. Jazz, Bubba, and myself were joined by Rose, Alice, Esme, and Carl.

I felt like a bayonet had just been jousted through my gut. It had only been a matter of time.

A terrific thunderstorm fled above us, shooting down golf balls of hail, whipping the wind into a topsy-turvy frenzy that circled our tumble down home. As if Mother Nature was in tune with the mood herein. Cackling Alice was a cache of information that she kept in-sourced. _Sorceress_. Candles flickered and grey smoke whorled the air, she alone was crackling with energy, kilowatts that raped the tumescence from the blacked out lamps. This séance-like atmosphere was only broken by the bodily vat of vampires in such a small space.

Esme paced back and forth the short hall, muttering beneath her breath about _scum_ and _filth_ and _undeserving ne'er do-wells_. We weren't sure if she was talking about the N'ads or me and Em.

Groaning beneath our cumulative weight, the cheap plyboard groaned. We held still as only our kind could until the DW shirked one more inch and settled further into the festering slop of swamp.

Gripped in this montage of monstrosities, I swore quietly and questioned, "Are they coming here?"

"Jesus fuck, does a bear shit in the woods? Look at her scrunched-up faerie face!" Em was already headed for the heavy artillery housed in the lean-to.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him up short, watched him swallow the poison that tapped his lips and fringed his irises. "I want to know what _Alice_ has to say."

Thoughts twirled through the electrified air and hit me from all sides:

"_We can't just let them find us."_

"_What happens when the Volturi figger out where we are?"_

"_Eddie can't be around Bella!"_

"Why not?" my voice lost all of its velveteen and was a hoarse croak that hoarded emotions that I hadn't even acknowledged!

Cigar chompin' Carl and toothpick twiddling Jazz exchanged a look. Em bowed into a corner and beat his head against the wall, causing yet one more hairline fracture to run up to the ceiling. Esme scourged me with her disdainful plea. Alice was tossed into her inner visions, tripped out in a Jim Morrison _Riders on the Storm-_type trance.

Rose spoke up, "We all know that you can hear _everything._ But you can't see a fucking thing of Bella's mind," _and the hits kept on coming_, "_She's a shield._ How could you not see it? She is your tua cantante. And she is the only one invulnerable to you. They would use her against you. A true weapon of mass destruction, Saddam be damned!"

The short hairs at the back of my neck stood on end. Clarity found me pounding the plasterboard with my fist and the fake pilaster above the one greasy picture window dislodged.

Bringing my charred eyes back to Rose, I saw her in the shaft of eerie light that worked its swarthy way through the room. Loyal, lethal, and uncanny. New perceptions warred with my imprinted vision of her as nothing more than the silver screen Marlene Dietrich of the vamp world. A haughty starlet became a full-blown woman.

A desperate fealty filled Rose's buttressing body, "Eddie, she's just knee-high to a June bug. You cannot endanger Bella!"

"I will personally deliver you to Italy if any harm comes to her."

All their voices, all their thoughts like thieves in my head!

A silence. Ominous and foreboding. Cat found her tongue. A deep tug on air and when Alice opened her peanut butter eyes, they were infinitely condemned as the Big Bang sucking the universe inside-out, "They're too close."

Everyone else was nothing more than scenery.

"What. Do. You. Know?"

"Why do they want _you_ so much, Eddie? Why did you leave England?" Taunting, frothing at the mouth. She could see her own neck stretched by the noose.

"They sent me a woman capable of conflagrating my talents with just one touch of energy. She was…just my type, _then_. Chelsea. In an instant I was immobilized beneath her," I felt the desolate smirk dying on my lips, remembering the pain of powerlessness and the entropy that followed, _filling_ me with…a _void_. All feelings of allegiance, fidelity, and family evaporated! "The Volturi decided to have done with their _gentlemanly_ ways. I guess that they thought I was just playing hard to get, that almost a century of courting was enough." I looked around the room, hostility replaced by terrifying reminiscence. "They stole my free will."

I don't know how she did it, I had been the one doing the interrogation and yet here I stood, giving too many answers.

As if weighing my words, Alice was still as a stone gargoyle with wings unfurled and clawed feet latching onto the ledge of a medieval cathedral. Subversive.

"Carl made a deal. He has the wounds to show for it. They took ounces of his poison, powerfully interested in his ability to shrug off the call of blood, _to become a surgeon of all things!_" I glanced at my sire. Carl. My grim reaper. My savior. Life was quixotic. I thanked him silently, even while I held onto the toxic hate of what he had done to me.

"But they never stop. They never will. And now you're here and they've found us. Why is that?"

Wanting to grab her neck in my hand, she had the sudden good grace to wither…_finally._

Waifish wraith.

Misgivings.

"Time to fess up, _Malice_," I scorned.

Settling down on the ancient couch that was a study in brown forests and deer on a worn pile backdrop, Alice began. J. Jenks, one of her former associates, had turned her in to the Volturi. Hoping to get into the good graces of the higher echelon, a pathetic pleb of a human being who thought he was made for better things. _Immortality_. Dumb cunt. He thought Alice was his mealticket. Bastard had no idea that we were going to make a feast out of him.

J. Jenks. I caught the thread in my monochromatic, micro-managing mind and followed its marked unraveling as Alice warbled on. _J. What did the J stand for? Jim? Jack, Jorge, Jacob, gah!_

Looking straight at me, "There's a bounty on my head." _Thought so._

_Ahhh, Jackoff Jenks._ I had the visual, a chipmunk-ish man with a mouthful of lies. A henchman wannabe. Dumpy, sweaty, and stained.

Why did the Volturi want Alice with such intent that they were willing to put a price on her capture?

"What else? Were you _with_ the Volturi? How do you know what Aro can and cannot do? You seem to be on a first name basis with them," my voice was a simmering riptide of unveiled rage.

Rearing back, a cobra slithering out of the basket, the evil elfin bit her tongue between the fangs of challenge. Shocked by the proximity of the scouts, a chink in her armor loosened.

_Porous, dimpled sandstone, brightest sunlight. Cloaked figures garbed in death and travesty stumbling about as if blinded by apparitions. I felt a hummingbird pulse beating out of a dead chest. _

Silence.

The big black mastodon, the obscure menace of her presence was finally visible to all in the room.

"The Nomads work for the Volturi. Scouts, Legions of the Underworld, they're the first wave. Their task is to find us to verify Jenks's information."

Carl clamped the stogie down on one side of his mouth and spoke out the other, "That doesn't matter now. We need to head off the trackers before they get here. Snuff out the trail. Make sure they're not linked to the lowcountry."

If he was asking me to flee, again, _now_, he better fucking think again. "I'm done running."

"We're not running, son. Just protectin' our own. Alice, where's Jenks? Can you find him?"

Breaking the crystal ball mood, Emmett looked aside, "_Cough_Jag-off_cough_."

_My sentiments exactly, bro!_

Esme was so het up over the threat to her family that she even let that one slide, "Just this time," she mumbled to my arched eyebrow.

"He's in the Meatpacking District. Last time I saw him was in Chicago though, Schaumburg. Trying to get in with The Outfit. He figured if the Volturi wouldn't take him then maybe the Mafia would," we were all standing and at the ready. The storm had passed. Blinking eyes dilated into pools of tar as the lights frazzled back on.

Jazz, the tactician, was racing through strategies, "We need someplace quiet or a huge fucking commotion for the nomads. What direction are they coming from, baby?" He strolled closer to Alice, held her hand tight and wrapped his lips against her razor sharp short black hair as she balked like a pony against the bridle of her visions.

"Down 17. They'll be at Myrtle Beach by nightfall."

Em howled, "The Grand Strand!"

"Bike Week," Rose intoned.

"Fuck yes," Jazz agreed.

"Time to bring out the toys, girls and boys," Emmett was halfway out the back door when the whisper I clasped inside my throat rolled into the hazy air, "I have to see Bella."

This time all six of them glared at me and spoke in unison, "If you-"

"I DON"T GIVE A FUCK!" the walls flooded with my vitriol. "I'm going to Brown's. _Now_. I'll meet up with you on the road," the seething of my skin at almost seeing her made me crazed. Furious that anyone would think to stop me. I didn't know what the hell was going to happen tonight.

_I needed to warn her, say goodbye. Touch her. _

Nods, sneers, sighs, and acquiescence.

"I'm off to put a damper on Jerkfest Jenk's party," Carl was so fired up, the ages-old assassin about to be let loose for a good cause, that even he was immune to Esme's decree against _potty mouth_!

Throwing on my leathers, speeding out of the trailer to uncover my baby, fueled by the nearness of death and the tugboat that kept chugging me back to Bella, I saw Esme through the tiny mucky kitchen window clasping a hand over her disregarded heart, hugging around Carl's waist and sadly sighing, "He's going to say farewell to her, isn't he?"

Em was yanking on his jacket and shoving clothes at Rose, "Is a pig's pussy pork?"

_**~~ll~~**_

Billeted over my 2009 Harley Davidson - VRSCF V-Rod Muscle, low to the road, hurtling into curves, my baby was tight and hard. The lagoon of copper hair on my head purled back, the silver metal between my thighs purring up sand and road-spill, I low-jacked my way through Mount Pleasant.

Silver was a slice of color I could see clearly. It reflected. It wasn't a true representation.

I wanted to mount Bella. Rut like a stag in springtime.

Death was knocking at my door and I was already dead.

It was scratching the pointed tip of its scythe against my brain. And Bella was alive.

Giving in to my evil angelic emotions, I raced to her. I didn't even know why.

What was the point? What was I going to do?

There was no time to reconsider.

The door whinged open as I grasped the greasy handle and rasped my other hand through the wind-torn crest on my head. Bella stopped still in the middle of the tilting floor, two servings of keylime pie in her hands.

I couldn't halt the grin that gutted my face. Her answering smile had wings of joy, her eyes jumped from me to the smoking Harley outside the slovenly window. I'd just peeled the sand up into a spiral with my haste. Back to me, Bella grinned and went about her business, delivering food to the hungering humans.

I was hungry.

Freed, she laid one foot in front of the other, clad in little suede thongs, pushing orders away to meet me with a slower smile that swam in headiness. Puncturing me as I backed up against the door that was dripping with condensation, she lifted coffee eyes up over me. I felt every touch of her look as if it was her skin on mine.

Alive.

Starving.

My toughened road-weary brown leathers felt suddenly clammy against my icy skin. She reaped over each muscle, every crease, the dents, the clearly defined crown of my cock.

A bite upon her full ruby lips unleashed the husky words, "Why, Eddie, what a pleasant surprise!"

I staked myself yet further onto the glass that was shuddering behind me.

Groveling.

Stark raving mad.

Petrified.

Ravenous.

I kept curling and uncurling my fists and the action was not lost on Bella as she roved up over my venom-filled veinous forearms, scorching my biceps, meeting the ridiculous pucker of my nipples that almost cut through the thin jersey of my t-shirt.

Then an even more languid smile, this one swimming with intoxication. I was terrified! My thoughts shaken loose; family, safety, Bella's blood, my desire, her spell…the nomads. Above it all I was asphyxiating, her glaze upon my blizzarding flesh felt like it was seeping molten lava in its path!

Reaching me, bracing a small palm over my lungs that strangled oxygen, she toed up and breathed, "You really should wear a helmet."

I spluttered, "What?" and my frowning half smile of disbelief fluttered up into my squinting eyes, "_Ha!_ And you should really watch the company you keep."

Wetness slicked my shirt against my back and it felt like abstract sweat was tolling and pooling between my shoulder blades.

I was cursed.

Fuck me. I should have just sent her a missive. A text message. A note on _Farcebook_.

She took no notice, held my face between her warm slim fingers, and brought those pursed lips far too close, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Yes, I needed to put Bella in her place. Extricate myself. Implicate her.

Kill her, fuck her, entrap her and wrap her in an impregnable haven.

"Nothing. Forget it. I have to go away," I was immobile beneath the whorls of her fingerprints that hastened over my features. "Just promise me one thing, stay close to your dad. Don't leave town," I broke myself away from those learning-too-quickly tips that were stroking heat all over my cheeks and forehead.

Stalling backwards, Bella gored me, "I don't think we can be friends, Eddie. Not when you're like this."

A shark's smile played over my mouth, glibly I said, "Good."

The fleeing flush from her cheeks was a ritual bloodletting. Gagging on Bella's reaction as she winced, she needed to know she was nothing to me. For her own life. For mine. I hadn't even had tail, 'sides from 'coon tail, since I'd first caught her fall at these very doors! I was throbbing in my entrails and never mind my dick. This was the impetus I required to shove her the fuck out of my life!

I wanted out of this tantric web. I could be an asshole if need be.

Even as she backed off and shot hurt from those sienna eyes, all I could think about was her beneath me! It had been three weeks to the day since she had perforated my life. The only thing, this itty bitty, uncontrollable, brazen human woman.

Fucking her was still foremost in my head, draining her humanity second-most. They both took a backseat to keeping her alive.

If anyone was going to kill Bella, it would be me. And I would make her my own in the process.

I couldn't even keep time with my screwed up emotions.

Bella dismissed me without a second look. The sinews of her thighs were silken and her strict posture strong. Iron-clad.

If I could have read her thoughts I was certain they would read, _Don't fuck with me, Eddie Cullen._

And then I just couldn't resist. Stupid motherfucker, at once glad for the prickly shrewdness of her new look that I had caused, and wanting the openness back, I unstuck myself from the door, the bell winked against my ears. Two long strides brought me to Bella's retreating frame. Her ass was so close to my hips that I wanted nothing more than to dig deep into her cleft and strike.

Smoke and beer and sweets and savories and all of the fumes of mortality gathered up my nose. When I sank my fingers into Bella's shoulders and turned her to me, I honored the iron tang and fruity perfume that was hers with a deep pull. Raising my fingers to her lips that had lengthened into a drear line, I crawled across them once. Tip-toeing. And back again, more firmly, willing her mouth to soften from the hurt I had caused it. Cruel bastard.

They did. Soften. Melt. I guided my index finger inside. Her breath singed me!

Jerking away, backing out, blowing on the frostbitten pads, I startled. Bella was victorious.

The come-to-dinner-cowbell trilled out its eulogy as I limped out.

The metal was mighty welcome between my thighs as I roared away from Bella. Looking back, I expected her to be watching my retreat.

She was nowhere to be seen.

_**~~ll~~**_

_Opportunity only knocks once. __Temptation__ bangs on the door forever!_

Oh you heckler, God.

Shooting up the coast en route to Surfside Beach, I took in nothing but the sylvan woods of Francis Marion Forest and the entertaining rural church signage that seemed to be speaking its biblical riddles to me.

Myrtle Beach's mobs, the furor, the drunkenness would be the perfect lure and hide.

This wouldn't be the usual cut-loose time. I couldn't rid myself of my final sight of Bella, triumphant, a woman. Even worse, I felt shelved by her when she hadn't watched my departure.

All for the best, I kept reminding myself. She was too fine a prize. This blushing, forthright ingénue was predestined towards death at the hands of demons like no one I had ever met! The shield, her blood, the link I felt towards her would all be far too tempting for the Volturi to pass by, civilian or not.

_If God's your copilot, switch seats!_

Not fucking likely.

Roaming over the asphalt, the ribbon of road snake-like, razor-back, this was certainly not the Autobahn but in this flat land it would do. Full-throttle, opened up, hairpin curves and scant rolling hills zipped beneath my tires.

As I had passed out of the city limits, I met sawbuck Chuck on his way in – _Good, get your ass back to Bella_. Motion slowed. Each flicker and twitch evident. We eyed each other in recognition. I gave Sheriff Shitballs a two-fingered salute in return to his one-fingered wave.

_The most powerful position is on your knees._

Isn't it just.

Sundown was dull, cloaked in heaving humidity. Gray, but that could have just been me.

I caught up with my crew at the Awendaw General Merchandise and Mercantile. Exiting the rustic barn-like structure, Bubba was complaining that the trophies of mammals decorating the lodge's interior were making his stomach grumble.

Waspy Alice wasted no time telling me, "You didn't have to be such an insufferable cad!"

I veered straight back onto my Harley, waiting for the others to follow.

Alice and Jazz were bookends of black leather wearing denizens of ash. Raising herself onto the saddle of her black 2009 Kawasaki Ninja – _where the tarnation did she get that thing from? Of-fuckin-course. She had known, and planned in advance. Secret-keeping Sybil! _– she screamed it into life. A futuristic Mrs. Frankenstein.

Lowering himself into _The_ OCC POW/MIA Tribute Chopper, a piece of machinery that was just as ordained to be his as were the shiny luminous scars that littered his blemished skin all up and down his body, Jazz smoothed his hand over the polished bars like it was his long lost lover. A slim snarling piece of technology that was raw with its glints of barbed-wire viscera and the winking spade nested in the backrest. Its gravelly voice spoke of chainlink fences, spikes and torture.

Clad in jeans, claiming he wasn't pussy enough to wear leathers, not like that pansy-fied Jim Morrison, Bubba leapt onto his Yamaha Star VMax. Twin champagne-colored exhausts curled out from his knees as his feet rested on the treads, and the giant horn-of-plenty muffler kicked up from his heels. He was grinning, on fire for the bike and the fight to come, thinking, "_Helllo my horny of plenty, how I've missed you!_" Rose hiked her skirt up, the suede lacings on either side baring a good slice of skin, and sank in behind Emmett.

"Giddy up!" Em blasted and swerved out of the parking lot.

The thick atmosphere muted the noise, roar, and hum of our bikes that deafened all of my tangent thoughts.

_Staying in bed shouting, 'Oh God!' does not constitute going to church._

"Well, I'll be goddammed," Em guffawed.

_God's last name isn't damn._

Em was howling with laughter, "Yeah, motherfucker, but we all want to know what the 'H' in Jesus H. Christ stands for! Answer that and I'll be a believer!"

We spilled through Georgetown with its greasy poverty and closing steel mill. Roamed past Pawley's Island, a mecca for the great unwashed. Closing in on Myrtle Beach.

Ahead of me, Rose was lewdly stroking Em's thighs with her vermillion nails, astraddle his hips, randy, licking up his neck. Spraddling his backside, her long blond braid swinging, the lacy white tank shimmying over her back, she zeroed in for a kiss.

Childish, inflated with thoughts of death, I yelled out, "Get a fuck'n room! Better yet, get yer own private island, preferably off the coast of Cuba!"

Em's arm flew back, middle finger like a flag, "Fuck you, Fidel!"

A behemoth Suburban with tinted windows tried to play chicken with us, and failed. Finally letting the gas-guzzling boat pass I chuckled at the bumper sticker that read _It's a Hybrid._

On the outskirts of the Grand Strand we stole past a Sticky Fingers barbeque joint. Snarfing silently I looked over to see Alice, Miss Sticky Fingers herself glaring back at me. _Yes, that would do nicely._

Our entrance to Myrtle Beach proper was met with a neon-lit chapel whose blinking sign warned, _"It is unlikely that there will be a reduction for the wages of sin."_

_Amen._

All laughter ceased.

Dusk had settled. The tone was fluorescent, lights jagged, people trashy, the strip a torrent of motorcycles and alcohol consumption and spontaneous fist fights. Crowds, colors, a Carnival…my head was immediately splitting.

We left our bikes outside a palace of bikinis and hard rock, taking to foot.

"Hey, _Fingers_, point the way to the man, y'all can find the woman," I was tanked on a migraine that would only be eased by murder.

Declining words, she sent the image straight into my head.

None of the drunk fucks noticed as I sped past them with windswept swiftness to the Circle K gas station two blocks down.

A peeling chime announced my presence. Standing at the counter, haggling with the clerk, he didn't bother to look around.

Morbidly obese, munificently bored, the woman at the till shouted back to the office that unleashed blue billowing clouds of sweet clover pipe smoke, "Daddy, how much is a carton of Parliament Lights?"

Limping to the horseshoe that was surrounded by stacks of smokes and cash registers, _Daddy_ was a lame old man whose sprightly nature coursed over his lively expression and words, "_PAH_-lament Lights, _mmm mm. _$23.95."

The craggy-faced old black man had twinkling eyes that took us both in with no fear.

Running through calculations in his head, visibly scoring them out and taking up counting on his fingers, _clearly multiplication was not his strong suit,_ the scout, the N'ad couldn't figure out if he had enough cash.

I'd never seen anyone so excited about a pile of cigarettes, though admittedly they were hard to come by, 'specially in Italy.

Standing closer, low and deep, deadpan, I spoke, "I really wouldn't bother stocking up."

With a flair of francais in his inflection, the tracker queried, "Oh? And why is that?"

"Firstly, smoking kills," I smirked and went on, "Secondly, I'd say you have just enough time left for…" I halted to check my watch and scratch my head, as if doing mathematics, "One more smoke. Don't waste your George Washingtons, dude. You'll be a goner within the hour." My voice was calm and menacing as the electric chair throbbing to life.

Keeping my sinister blackened eyes downcast as he turned around, I let the vile smile lift the corners of my mouth.

A glam rocker Rastafarian with his umber dreads, peacock blue embroidered smoking jacket and the skinny black leathers that would look lethal to anyone but me.

Eyes a reddened store of human blood, he stuttered over the foreign words in his mouth. Crimson caverns and carnivorous. "Edward."

I took a deep breath as my hackles raised, "Laurent."

Dipping my head at Old Man Sage and his daughter, whose eyes never left the scratch-off lottery cards she was scraping gold foil from, I invited Laurent, "Breath of fresh air?"

The pursued was the predator. He was cornered.

I led him into the thick of things. There was the inevitable broken doll of a woman, a heap of flesh and an askew neck too crooked for her shoulders, fallout from having drunk dived off a hotel balcony. Laurent's nostrils flamed all over the scent of her puddling blood but I towed him forward.

We barged through the bloodthirsty assembly that had gathered like it was the storming of the Bastille or the beheading of Marie Antoinette. The throng, almost wholly human, held a mighty candle to our kind with their yearning for public beheading. Venomous, inebriated dreams.

Spew and guts and puke and innards. Beer, Jack, Goose, and bourbon.

Loud pipes, tires burning up dense melted rubber stench, lurid paint schemes, tattoos and naked titillation.

And Victoria. _Ahhh, Victoria_. Standing tall and shrugging her shoulders back under the fluffy white skin of a sheep's woolen stole, neck dripping with tarnished gold chains hanging with charms, outfitted in a black leather catsuit unzipped through her cleavage and flicked back at her wrists; apparently Suzi Quatro was her muse. She was even humming _The Wild One_ under her breath, tunelessly. Obviously Laurent and Victoria had taken their vacation from Volterra and their bland cloaks to heart, _ha_! Amazonian, albino and red-haired all at the same time. _Glam rock, through and through. _I took a jog through her brain and tautened. _He would make a fine mount, but I don't see what all the fuss is about. I could shred him up and have him begging for more. And someone needs to get this fucking little pixie kitten off me!_

"Not a chance, _Suzi_," I smiled that destructive curving of lips. Aiming for the kill. This would be too easy.

Emmett called the legions of leather closer, jumping up and down, waving his arms like a gibbon. Rose beckoned slouching, rakish men towards the fray with a look and a slanderous nude leg.

Opening acts.

Full dark fell. The witching hour was upon us. A waxy half moon struggled against the clouds and threw its gossamer glow over them. And us. Silver allow flinted against chrome. The melee pressed closer. Legs and arms mangled. Nobody the wiser.

The gasket of my hate and hurt and want and fiery need was freed.

It looked like nothing more than the usual Bike Week brawl. It was anything but.

The liturgy of the pack worked to our advantage. Jeering, bloodthirsty, just waiting for the strike of the guillotine.

Swelled with invectives, I put my mouth to better use. Jazz took point. Em and Rose bewitched and staved off those too close. Alice assisted the ass kicking.

Incensed at the thought of Bella's capture, I caterwauled into the night, my throat a barren badlands of want and preemptive protectiveness. Then I hunkered down over Victoria's torso and made a channel of her stony flesh.

Jazz crawled over Laurent like he was a toy, mindless. While he scraped flesh from indestructible marrow, Alice tore her hands into his spine and ripped hard.

The snarls and moans of the bikes drowned the dirty rattle of air leaving lungs for the last time, of arms parting ways with chests forever.

Caskets of body parts fell to the tar.

Submerging growls and hisses and the shearing of limbs from chests, we quartered the inhuman bodies. Chainmail disintegrations, piecemeal. Screeching glee. Coffins of glassy guts and spite.

Victoria and Laurent were dusted. In public. With a cheering audience who had no fucking clue what they'd just witnessed.

Waking from my killing spree, calm as if I'd just taken a walk on the beach, refreshed, I couldn't wait to get back to Bella. Fresh human respite.

It took a full day to clean up the mess, to scatter the scent, incinerate the titanium skeletons of Laurent and Victoria. The five of us split up and dissembled any scat that had led the N'ads this way.

Safely home, Carl had made do with an eye-for-an-eye. Jag-off Jenks would not be a problem again.

On the way back to Cainho', we stopped at the Kick'n Horse saloon. Antsy, angst-ridden, saddle-sore and not in a good way, I was ten times magnanimous and keyed-up from killing. And…_putrid_ at how I'd left Bella.

Alice swore this was a night I would not want to miss.

The black letters on whiteboard across the road read, _Don't give up! Moses was a basket case!_

_**~~ll~~**_

Inside I was squeamish and squirrely, surly and short-tempered, never more foul-mouthed in this hell hole of an establishment bursting at the seams with bikers, cowboys, farmers, Gullah, and Geechee amassed. The mortal milieu spilled about in a tank of rot and sweat and swill.

We took our drinks to the back of the room. Alice and Rose sized each other up, replaying the scenes of the previous night through their heads, looking for loopholes. Em thought he was being subtle but about every other word out of his mouth was _Fucking dusted!_ interspersed with _Fuck you, Volturi!_ Jazz was less jazzed up. The wages of war were nothing to celebrate.

Backing down first, Alice nodded her head to the dartboard on the far wall. Attached to Junior's hand as he tugged her out of the red cracked vinyl booth, she swiped paper packets of salt and pepper, the unoccupied beermats and an unlit candle from the tabletop and stashed them in her giant hobo bag.

Emmett and Jazz, they'd found their outs. There was just me. Loose ends. Grace, thy name is Bella.

Super sensitive, my hearing took up the steady thrum, an echo of my homicidal growl, and the unmuffled _gggrrrrr_ of a low-riding truck. A sound that I had catalogued, complete with the heavy reverberations of bass. _The Wolfmobile_. And after the engine died, quiet, steady, skipping half steps that made my non-pulse resound. _Bella was here._

With Jacob.

She was propelled through the old-time saloon's half doors by the gargantuan man-boy. My steely eyes narrowed. My fists tightened and I had to force myself to loosen my grip lest I pulverized the frosty glass tankard of cheap beer within my grasp**. **_Chrissakes!_ _ This is why Alice made me come here?_ Closer to me than the only other time I'd seen him, this monster was…_huge_. He could give Emmett a run for his greenbacks. The big, bad, juju wolf escorting beautiful Bella was all jocked up, jovial, full of bonhomie and a smug satisfied air that he had his goliath's palm on the back of my own fairy human.

But she was not mine.

Yet.

Jacob's features were sharp and there was a glint in his tinny eyes. The Acadian stature of him spelled dreaded judgment for me. Voodoo was at work here. Witchery. Shamanism.

Surprisingly his thoughts were clean. Until his haunches shivered, almost shizzling into his other form, as he felt my stare and, meeting my look and then fleeing through the bar to find Em, Jazz, Alice and Rose, he shouted so loudly internally that my head reeled back and I slammed my eyes shut, "Fucking bloodsuckers!"

_Howdy-do to you too, dog breath._

Sadistically I sat still, incubating in my own conceit. Inertia was within my nature, but this was more of a stagnation of the purgatory that was my soulless being.

Bella looked to him, nearly cracking her neck in the effort it took to meet his gaze, his frame looming over her fragile corporeal body. She fucking laughed freely at the words he whispered in her uncovered ear, her treacherous tresses pulled to the side. Son-of-a-fuck!

I could smell her from my seat in the darkened booth that was dimly lit by a glowing candle in the Carnival-glass bowl on our sticky table, and straight through the amber diamond-embossed plexi that was meant to be a privature between tables. It only shed dancing flaming bullions of luster across Bella's body that let itself be led by another man to the bar. Raising my eyes skyward, I saw her ghostly reflection in the stamped tin pieplate ceiling.

I wanted to harness her and ride her bareback. Roughshod.

At the Kick'n Horse, with _Pride_ blaring over scratchy antiquated speakers, an unknown enemy was in our midst. Manchester Orchestra was rumbling in one small recess of my mind, gunning guitars and guttural lyrics of illegal wanting and prohibitive actions. _And_ the recollection of the brutality we'd just committed. A triumvirate of torment; the thing I wanted most, the song that epitomized me and Bella, and an atrocity of a beast at her beck and call with his hands, his arms lowered around her.

I could smell his canine scent even from the distance of the table furthest from the bar. Repelled, my nostrils flared in disgust. Anubis. Rank. Repulsive. Spoiling the fragrance that hit me at the same time, winding its way to me from Bella's unleashed hair, her touched skin, her beating heart…singing blood, strawberry breeze, floral fuck-me-tastic skin. _His_ stench overwhelmed her perfume!

This place, my clothes, and Bella's locks needed to be fumigated of the reek of Jacob.

I had not ceased thinking about Bella since she saw me out the door of Mama Brown's the night before. And I hadn't even had a chance to beat off since then, what with all the N'ad activity! Now I watched her with hooded, longing, fuck-the-shit-outta-me-now eyes, remembering how I ordered untouched cherry cobbler each evening at closing. Just so I could smell her. See her. Build up the library of fantasies in my mind. Speak to her, smirk at her, wink and watch that goddamn splendid spilling of a blush across her palest skin!

I couldn't even stand to think about our date, the dance, that _kiss_.

Instead, I recalled the first time I said her name aloud. To her. Two weeks ago. She'd stuttered and dropped her pencil that had been slanted across the mint green and white columned order pad that was slung from the short, white, mussed-up apron that hid the front of her shortest of shorts from my view. Inwardly, I'd rejoiced at her reaction. Dazzling was a given. Outwardly, I'd bestowed her with my most gentlemanly mannerisms, leaning out of the creaking chair to retrieve her bitten-quick #2 pencil, making sure to slide one long finger softly and slowly over the fleshy valley of her palm as I deposited it in her hand. I was rewarded by another flush and a steaming outgush of saccharine breath that I'd pulled into the treasure trove of Bella in the file cabinet of my mind.

Moving from table to table, she kept her earbuds hanging around her neck. The slim iPod sheltered in her back pocket and the cord from the minute speakers hitting her hips with each sway of her ass, the split wires slapped her nipples every time she moved.

She wore her Pod ceaselessly. Tuning out people. Just like me.

I wanted to know why her mind was such a garrison. Maybe she could be my sanctuary. A stronghold.

The Volturi could never know about her. _And me._

I wanted to hate her.

In lieu, I hated my life. What she had done to my meager existence. Allowed me to kill. Made me hanker after a soul. Life. A heartbeat and love.

I despised the saddened unending reaches of her dowsing eyes when pain limned the irises that glowed a deeper brown.

_I wanted to fucking hate her!_

I definitely disliked the jacked-up jackal at her side.

She could loathe me, spit on me, tell me to go to hell. And that would be preferable. Because I was already there.

I needed her to look at me. See all of my colors. The hues that were melted scattered orbits in my head. I had hoped my vision would correct itself by the time my newborn era had ended, much like the full range of tints and shades becoming clear around the four month mark for human babies.

It never did.

The only color I could see was Bella. And she was a rainbow after a quick abundant rainstorm.

_Goddamnit!_

She was turning me to dust.

_Eddie does not emote! Leave that to Jazz, the 'sensitive' one!_

While Bella's sphinx-like shell of a mind held me at bay, this diminutive and sophisticated girl-woman had woven her succubus way into my long-gone vitality.

God I fucking wanted to kill her and fuck her all at the same time!

As if she felt my incarcerating eyes snaring her in, _finally_, Bella swiveled towards me. Orbs widened, her pulse throbbed in her swan's throat, beat-shush-beat-shush-beat-shush…_shiver shudder_. Simultaneously grabbing her drink and the cur's hand, she wended her way through the gathering of genuine biker men and women, all clothed in leather and denim and emblems and tattoos, pasted with drunken _joie-de-vivre_ and well wishes, and just wantonly worshipping the gloriousness of this bright spring day brought to close.

Lurid fetishes pluraled in my mind; her lips, her nips, her earlobes.

I spiked my lager with pure blood from the hospital's bank secreted in the flask at my hip pocket. I needed to shore myself up for this encounter.

"Eddie," she tilted her fine head just so and laved her lips, as if she knew I would have, could have, wept with every last word she spoke to me if any trace of saline were to be found within my desiccated body, "Fancy meeting you here." Those words brought back our conversation at the Strawberry Festival. Floundering for just a moment, putting those blousy gorgeous fatal lips to the thick-rimmed highball that held the deep brown slew of rum and coke, Bella took a long swallow and I watched, entranced, as the liquid met her parched mouth and made a slow wave down her throat. _Goddamn if I didn't want my own jizz spilling down that hidden slope!_

"You look mighty fetching tonight, Bella," I straightened, never more aware of just how dirty I was. My filthy thoughts at home with my scrotty dishabille. I'd been on the highway for twenty-four hours, had carnage all over my hands, my hair was rumpled by wind and sea spray. The leather on my long, muscular legs was trapped with motes of road-ridden grit and my t-shirt was a shorn mess. Biting her bottom lip until the pink turned white and chapped and I had to claw my fist around my glass to keep myself from grabbing her wrist to replace her teeth with my own, I still smelled of sex to Bella. Perhaps she wasn't innocent at all. I remembered the pillow of those succotash plumes turning under mine, her tongue's stoking stroke over the icicle of mine.

I shifted in my seat, reseating the crude, large, and unbelievably tough erection that was completely evident before I decided I didn't give a fuck that she saw my excitement at her presence.

As Bella began her introductions I stood up, fascinated by the way she disregarded the mutt in order to focus on my unfolding frame. And hell if she didn't stop short and sigh hard at the sight of my cock that was literally pounding against the fucking frail flap of my skins.

_Holy Grail, yes baby, that's just what it is!_

Lifting my lips in a half-grin, smug as all the fuck-yeah, I _ahem'd_ and obliged Miss Bella to release her awestruck glazed-over stare of my glans. Motioning towards fucktard numero uno, I queried, "Are you going to introduce me to your _boyfriend_?" I almost hocked a furball at that utterance, but swallowed it instead, and was rewarded when Bella blanched and took one step further away from said shithead, one step closer towards me.

Reedy and flute-like, strong and purposeful, Bella made our acquaintance, "Eddie, this is Jacob Black. He's a new student at Wando, just transferred from New Orleans. Relocated because of Katrina, the Blacks have been to hell and back since then. _And he's Cajun…isn't that cool!_" Yup, _NO_! That is not cool, not cool at all. Thank you, Bella, for confirming my suspicions. What's worse than a shapeshifter who stinks to high hell? A cock-strutting, unrestrained, untamed werewolf with Hoodoo tendencies written in his blood. I wanted to glass the asshole in his widely grinning mug. Jackass had no idea who he was messing with!

Oh, I was so over this etiquette bullshit. But of course Bella continued. Esme would be proud.

"Jacob, this is Eddie Cullen. He's a regular at the diner." _And he wants to be a regular diner of your pussy pie!_ "Anyway, Jacob's an old family friend. We go way back to pigtails and ABC gum. Right?" She grinned at the buffoon and punched his shoulder. Like an overzealous older sister to her younger brother.

_That was a good sign, right?_

And I was boning hard with every instant in her luscious presence.

Heralding all of my former gentlemanliness, I reached forward with a cool hand to grip the forged 109 degree clasp of this odious Jacob whose stank was marring the percolating air of perfection that surrounded Bella. Unbeknownst to her, even in full view, a challenge was laid down, and wagers were placed.

With an understated snarl I made it known that I'd staked claim first.

With a baring of canines and a hiss, this Jacob thought I would back off immediately.

As fucking if.

Game on!

"Pleasure to meet you," I tested him.

"Likewise," Jacob defied me.

I extrapolated thoughts from kibble breath's head. Wanted to excise his heart. He knew I was there. With a huge grin that was all spite, he taunted me, _"She doesn't know, does she?"_

I turned my head once, terror skidded through me. Emotional fear, anxiety. Something I'd never contemplated before. As far as I was concerned, Bella was on a _don't need to know_ basis.

Doghead interpolated himself further between me and Bella. Instead of backing up, I squared off, wrath making the planes of my body concentrated, prepared to slaughter. A whisper so low, a straight blade, that only Black's keen hearing could detect it, "Breath a word of it and _I will_ retaliate."

Hiding his bray in his beer bottle, Black impaled me with a sideways look, _"Idle threats, my man. She already knows about me. You're on your own. But I think you know that, don't you."_

Ever-lovin' Bitch!

He was wedged between me and Bella. And it fuckin' rankled me that he wouldn't just take his leave.

And now this gruesome allegory! Bella knew all about his true nature. Was his _friend_? Oh, there were many shades of black. Who the hell did this schmuck think he was? What did he think, that just because he had blood, the most fetid shit I'd ever smelled in my death, pumping through his organs, that he was God's gift to Bella?

Nah, I think not.

Lookin' like he wanted to stick Bella with his red hot poker, fuck'n Esme and her plant analogies were leagues worse than Em's Bubba Sparxxx commentary!

And still it kept on; _I'd like to deadhead him_!

A tinderbox of emotions, I wanted to piss on my patch, scratch up Bella and mark her as mine.

Meeting my scathing eyes, nervous ticks resounded through her body; first the flush, then the trembling smile, the twitching, sweet eyebrows that settled as her left foot tapped in time to a new song.

Seeking to break the cutthroat glacial tension that was doing my nut in, Rose strolled up, looped an arm around Bella and gently swished their hips in time to the brash tempo.

Winking at me, Rose pulled Bella away and started a slow bump and grind, singing the lyrics, _"I'm just a bachelor, looking for a partner. Someone who knows how to ride, without even falling off. Gotta be compatible, takes me to my limits. Girl when I break you off, I promise that you won't want to get off."_

My ears perked up at the words.

With a smirk, Rose swept her hands over Bella's lassoing arms and tossed back to me, "This is one of Bella's favorite songs."

Other body parts perked up with that utterance!

I had to hand it to Rose; crotch-rot Jacob was forgotten. I wanted to take Rose's place. Sitting back, I enjoyed the view, smiled and played nice, "You don't say!"

Looking straight into my eyes that were hazy with blood and want and lust, Bella made me feel fear for the first time. An overwhelming vulnerability that eclipsed arrogance because Wolfman Jake had super powers just like me and had made it known that he would not play fair.

Beauty rejoindered, "_Mmmm_." Unrealistically, she licked her enticing lips, half-masted her eyes, and leaned forward to whisper in a wanton voice that I wanted to hear cry my name in the throes of passion, "_Pony_ makes me…_do things I would not normally do._" My erection groaned in my pants, and then I was made to wonder _who or what had she done it with_?

I swear to fucking Jezebus, she could read my mind! For the next thing I knew, Bella was smiling this sublime, unselfconscious, been to Heaven and back smile. So goddamn good and pure, in spite of the aforementioned provocation, that I knew she was walking into my web. Her heart sped and my venom took flight.

The sultry interlude was ended by none other than Fagin Fingers Alice creeping up. _Holy shit!_ What was Bella going to think of her? I was a vampire for fuck's sake and she gave even me the heebie jeebies!

A proffered hand and a gamine smile. Whispers of Alice's intake made me aware that she was clandestinely imbibing Bella's irresistible aroma. We were all susceptible to her.

I banged my head against the table, feeling like a scared adolescent whose handjobs were too close to being discovered. _Only it was more like life and death._ Throw-me-to-the-wolves Alice tilted her head to the side at the scant aloofness with which Bella met her clutch.

I felt a tirade coming on. I did not approve of Alice's nearness to Bella. Both were looking expectantly at me.

_Smite me now._

I sighed, swore, and caved, "Bella, this is Alice. She's Jazz's-" _what? His light-fingered lady friend? Another lost soul to our fold of walking dead?_

I hesitated too long and Alice intervened, "Jazz's woman."

_Okay, that was simple enough. And a good thing because I was about to say she was an off-her-rocker robber of sundry goods!_

"Very nice to meet you, Alice. I hear tell you're from Chicago. What brought you here?" _Oh yes, genteel southern charm never failed._

Alice rested a hand against Bella's cheek as if trying to reach into her brain -- G_ood luck with that and send me the Cliffnotes!_ --,"Infinite love. Know what I mean?"

Shirking away from the cold spread of Alice's touch, Bella tasered me quickly and then looked to the bar, "Yes, I think I just might."

"I expect so."

Their interchange left me soundless. Hoping. Hurting. Haunted.

Everything was too close. I just wanted to pretend for one night that I was nothing more than a man with a woman.

But we were brought back to earth by Jake sitting beside me like a turd in a punchbowl. Knocking back his beer he asked Bella if she was ready for another drink and a game of pool.

Drooling Teen Wolf.

"Actually, Jacob, I'd like to have a private word with Eddie. _Now_, there's a girl over there by the bar that keeps looking at you like she could eat you for dinner and then ask for dessert. Why don't you dance with her?"

_See you, bloodhound!_

She sat next to me, too close, yet too far away. With my cool hands upon her sweaty arms I turned her to me. She welcomed my touch in this musty oppressive bar, but was not disarmed.

"You must thank your mom for me," she said.

"My MOM?" The hell? Incredulousness made me flinch.

"Yes, Eddie. Miss Esme? She who birthed you? You didn't just spring forth like some mythological creature, did you?" Bella joked.

I gave a smarmy sour laugh and lifted my tainted drink, _If only you knew. _

"She stopped by last night," of course. Keeping a watch over the Swans. "Wanted to welcome me to the parish. She brought a pie." I shucked out a snort at that one! Fucking weird ass Maw, loved to cook but usually only made her famous pies at fair-time on account of the fact that we couldn't stomach the fumes. "She said you talked about me?" Bella's tiger-striped eyes tickled me.

_Esme, you interfering know-it-all, I bet you did!_

I leaned down and let my hand play with the tousles of hair on her bare shoulder, "Yeah, I might have mentioned you." The form of my lips was suddenly raffish. I wanted Bella.

Trolling her hair out of my fingers so that each strand slid in a sensual breeze over my flesh, Bella straightened and contradicted my captivation.

She kept pursuing me, "You know, Eddie, I do not appreciate the way you spoke to me last night." _Crap._ I wondered what she and Esme had talked about, what Esme had told her, because her rebuke had Maw's attitude written all over it!

I would have blushed. I was sheepish. Ashamed. She was right. _Sorry_ hit the back of my throat like vomit. It hurt my innards, refluxed up over my tongue. I said it anyway, "I'm sorry, Bella."

Having once again prevailed over me, Bella excused herself to the ladies. Jake was still chapping my ass as he watched her retreat through the saloon. _Annoying human necessities were innerfering with my gameplan. _

This was bull-hockey! I wanted to play tonsil hockey with Bella. Pocket pool was definitely on my agenda.

This was a losing game.

Beer guzzling locals started to whoop it up as soon as Jim John and the Two Timers took center, postage-stamp-sized stage. Cutting a rug to the musical renderings of fiddle, guitar, and raspy roadhouse blues on the tacky dance floor, a hootenanny was taking shape.

It was time to walk the line.

Emmett's golden eyes widened as he watched me stalk across the tightly–packed, sweaty-smelling, dimmed-down room towards Bella, who was bright and on her way back _to me_. "Whoa there, Captain Cock." Looking back at him, I felt the feral fierceness of my face, "What now, Spunk?"

"Just saying, keep a lid on it. I got yer back, bro," discreetly, Bubba nodded to Jacob who was glued to every synapse between Bella and me.

Withholding the desire to grip her curvaceous ass and pull that heart-shaped rear right into my crotch, I crept up softly. Gaining her attention with a gentle brush of her locks to the side, my tapered cold as ice fingers filtering through the sublime yarns, my mind memorizing the feel of those red ochre strands sliding over the circles of my skin, creating a pattern of bliss that I wanted to feel against my chest, my neck, my thighs so that the suck-me shell of her ear was at _my_ beck and call. I made a tube of my talented tongue and blew a chilled breeze from the cleft of her shoulder and neck up that elongated, pulsing flesh until, with a final exhalation, I lined her lobe with sub-zero, shivering-inducing temperature, and the hypnotizing honeyed scent of my oxygen.

She jolted. Live wire. Eyes sweeping distractedly over her shoulder met mine. And the daze descended.

_Mine, mine, and all fucking mine!_ Whether she realized it or not.

Making a slight bow -- _Shakespeare had nothing on this! _-- I held out my hand, "Miss Bella, would you do me the great honor of this dance?" All sweltering southern drawl.

No chance. Bella curtseyed like a good southern girl. I had a feeling she was somewhat bad to the bone.

A commotion compelled my eyes. Bubba was gorging himself on laughter in a corner; he'd just given Jacob a lightning fast wedgie that found the monolithic moron digging his tightie whities out of his ass!

Inhaling a choppy breath, Bella placed her petite hand in mine, showing no shock or horror at the frozen tundra of skin that met her hot human flesh.

_Mine._

Sidesaddle. Saucy. Horny Bella.

Twirling her into a two step, a jig, rapid movements that she met with ease even though her face was aflame, her chest lit with a rosy hue that I could just about write fucking sonnets over! The captivating creature fulminated me.

Stupid instincts swilled through me, ritualistic intimacy. To protect her. To hold her. To make her feel at ease with me and within herself. To take away the unknowable hurt that arched through her tawny eyes at the most innocuous moments. To start by showing her that _we could_, in fact, dance, _again_. _Yes-indeedy_.

The jig was up. A fresh song started. A love song. Leisurely, disintegrating.

_I'm but a clean man, stable and alone man  
Make it so I won't have to try  
The faces always stay the same  
So I face the fact that I'm just fine  
I said that I'm just fine_

I pulled Bella to me and set the pace, guided her so that she could feel the graceful motions of her own body melting with mine before I turned her away. Our hips rocked. One hand to her hourglass waist and the other clasping her hand to the hollow where my heart wanted to beat, I pulled Bella straight against me, burrowed my nose and lips into that silky hidden secret skin behind her ear, our feet shuffled as we forgot the motions of the music, rapt and wrapped so closely to one another.

_I could feel my heartbeat taking me down  
And for the moment, I would sleep alright  
I'm dealing with a selfish fear  
To keep me up another restless night  
Another restless night_

I began to hum against her, sending chills and goosebumps scattering hither and thither. Gripping just slightly lower, resting my palm on the uppermost hills of her finest ass, raising our conjoined hands just slightly higher so that her knuckles brushed with every stroke against my own sensitive neck, I flicked my tongue out and suckled with my lips on that tender landscape that was bared. _To me. _

_And I realized that then you were perfect  
And my teeth ripping out of my head  
And it looked like a painting I once knew  
Back when my thoughts weren't entirely intact_

Tiny throaty moans coupled with my swallowed silent groans. We moved in roundabouts. Hardly noticing the uproarious raucous around us. God I could lick her for hours and never tire of those sexhalations! I thought it so, but my dick had other more pressing urges. As my pelvis pressed against Bella's hips, my thigh found its roughened way between hers; my inflexible hands lowered and lifted her back onto me.

I was going to have a fullblown foregasm!

_And I felt love…again_

I linked our fingers as the final timbres twirled out, pivoted Bella to me, but apart. The laugh that bubbled out of her mouth was only half full, hinting at shades of some other darkness that tormented the abyss of her.

Then, quickened, she draped her arms around my neck and exhaled onto me, "Thank you for the dance."

Oh, she was dizzy all right. Just not from my spells. Tipsy.

The goon was at our side in an instant. Bella toked on a self-satisfied grin while her appreciative gaze stroked back over me, "Eddie's going to take me home. I'll see you at school, Jacob."

_Yeah, I got it from here, pup, don't make me give you a likkin'!_

Enraptured, I offered her my arm. I squired Bella out.

I pulled the helmet over her head and straightened her gleaming hair beneath. Settled into the seat and reached behind to lower her against my back. A scandalously deep breath filled my chest at the warmth of her sliding against me. Stealing her arms about my waist, she coupled her fingers and brought them right against my waist where leather met skin. Pressed tight. Thighs and mashed up breasts. I took the slow road to her house savoring every bump that nudged her against me.

* * *

**A/N: ****Rebelward Without a Cause, the outtakes, are now up. Listed as a separate story on my profile. Review and alert as there will be more to come.  
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**The Fictionators recc'd my Comuppance! Go have a look, the link is on my profile. Those women rock hardcore (special thanks to Kassiah and Red!).**

**There's a bunch of shit on my profile and probably on the thread from this chapter; music (it's all about Manchester Orchestra), the bikes, the Hunley, etc.**

**The Dead Thread, look I'm tired of asking. This is an open invitation; come hang with the cool kids…we have porn (I **_**mean tasteful photos**_**)…****www(dot)twilighted(dot)net(slash)forum(slash)viewtopic(dot)**** php?f=33&t=4493&start=0**

**Finally, I have to take at least a month's break from DC's. Huge apologies. My excuse: I've been working on a novel and took an eight week break to get this all started. ****DO NOT WORRY****. Dead Confederates is close to my vile heart and always on my mind, and there is a shitload left to come! Just bear with me, please.**

**Oh, the epic reviews, the enormous faves/alerts, the blogspots, tweets, notes on profiles, etc. LOVE. Keep 'em coming! **

_**PRETTY PRETTY DIRTY NASTY PLEASE, REVIEW.**_

**Anything else you wanna' know (within reason), shout me out!**


	7. Touch Me I'm Going to Scream

Many thanks to V. You absolutely spoil me rotten and I am honored by your friendship.

Ape, ta for your help and words and advice on all things auto!

Claudia, Kari, you ladies have cheered me up and encouraged me forward in all of my projects, for this I send a world of thanks across oceans and continents.

DW gang, you know I could not love you harder; as always, this one's for you!

Disclaimer: One more time, say it with me. Rebelward is _mine_. Twilight is _hers_.

* * *

**Touch Me I'm Going to Scream **

_...if you touch me, well I just think I'll scream  
cuz it's been so long, since someone challenged me.  
and made me think...about the way things are...  
made me think...about the way they could be.  
I believe it- why? oh my...  
ooh my lord...ooh my lord...I don't even know why...but..._

_oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don't you ever turn it off!  
oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don't you ever turn it off!_

_feelings...why? oh my: human needs. heartbeats.  
I can see it...all. by the way you smile.  
I'm smiling too! I see myself in you.  
I am with it! ooh man I am wired!  
ooh my lord! ooh my lord- yeah...now I really know why!_

_oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don't you ever turn it off!  
oh! this feeling it is wonderful! don't you ever turn it off!_

_Touch Me I'm going to Scream, Pt. 2_, My Morning Jacket

_~~ll~~_

Six days, nine hours, forty-three minutes. I hadn't fucked it up because I hadn't contacted Bella, and she hadn't gotten in touch with me. I called at Mama Brown's on the Sunday following our interlude at Kick'n Horse to find that she'd begged off work due to a hangover. And that Charlie had placed her under basic house arrest.

I hated not knowing what she was thinking, yet despised not seeing her even more. Minutes felt like landmines detonating in my mind. Hours were whorish teases that made me crave sleep, or sex, or something resembling simple bodily functions and daily minutia and oblivion. The days were the worst; as one ended another began, seamlessly begetting interminable affliction.

The silver lining was that the sensual, majestic meeting that had brought her flesh to mine, her affection to me at the saloon, had remained unsullied by Douche Dog and my gruesome grisly actions in Myrtle Beach. Not being near Bella meant that I could relive, repeat, replay our dance and the ride to her house with her clinging like a licentious limpet to my hard back, her Sirocco hair lashing around us both, crawling like sweet-scented seaweed over my bare arms.

A quiver filled with aching ratcheted through me. Aching and loathing. I dared not dial her number. Em kept baiting me, "Get that _manpon_ out of yer ass and do something, braw!"

Cunt-fucker.

Longing amped me up.

I had never been more aroused now that I had experienced the taste of Bella's lips, the singe of her blood in a blush as my fingers brushed her apple-like cheeks, the feel of her hips whose bones were pure poetry and her waist a sinuous sonnet inside of my long hands. Knowing the touch of her ass against my loins and the rhythm of movement between our bodies, her legs spanning my thighs, I yanked my dick to images of her in all her human innocence dozens of times a day! A bonus to being a vampire, my hand rocked with unseen speed, and I was hard most of the daylight hours. Ripping through my Dickies almost all night long. 'Course that also became a penance of our nature, when there was not an equal to release into. Blue balls was never more true than for a century old vampire in the corporeal body of a seventeen year old boy, with no hope of fucking because the thought of any other woman left the gagging musky taste of skunk in one's mouth!

A shrill, technological peal caught me mid-ball busting. _What the fuck?_ I nearly tore my cock off as I jumped up and hobbled about the room searching for the source of the noise. Tiny, black, -- _Ha, my new least favorite color! --_a cell phone, a Blackberry. My balls tightened and itched and hurt, like fruit filled with acrimony, crushing my guts beneath the tight need for release. The thieving titmouse apparently wanted me to embrace this _Now Generation_. Christ, even the Black Eyed Peas had a farcebook page, and _fuck it all, what the sam-hell was with Larry King tweeting nowadays!_

Bent double over the huge throbbing of my erection that wouldn't let up and had no intention of giving me space, I looked down at it with a baleful glare and inspected the jangling phone that was glowing with Bella's photograph. With no hope of controlling my almost-cumming, choppy breaths, made more pronounced with Bella's clear, throaty voice in my ear, I ceased breathing altogether except to answer her with terse words.

"Bella, what can I do for you?" I held my breath and cursed my cock with its levitating abilities.

Sounding wearied and confused, "Hey, Eddie. I hope I'm not interrupting your _afternoon delights_."

I felt the devilish grin unfold across the crescent of my lips, my voice deepened of its own accord as I sucked in a tiny gasp of oxygen, "Certainly nothing that you couldn't help with, Bella."

I frowned at my own innuendo. This was not how I wanted to be. But with my erection even more engorged and my hand just holding it in obeisance with a tight grip at the base, that close to orgasm, I could think of nothing else as I listened to her smoky tones.

She swallowed an intake of breath and released a quick exhale that I wished I could smell. I heard her lick her lips and the slight puncture of her even teeth gouging her lower lip before releasing. After a deeper breath, more steady, "I need a ride. Could you come pick me up?"

With the details arranged, I attempted to stave off my starving glans at the thought of seeing Bella, tucking my hard-on back in my jeans. I pulled a washed-out flannel off the heap of unclean clothing in the corner of my room, pissed that Esme was still on strike and wondering what I needed to do to get back in her good graces. With a quick splash of cold water through my untamed mangle of hair, I cleared my eyes and begged the motherfucking beast in my pants to leave me the hell alone, for just one afternoon.

I made Gerald's Tires in record time, festering beneath the vivid visions of sundry mechanics swarming all around Bella. With a punctured tire, she and her Chevy were stranded at the Tricuntie's favorite auto body shop. '_Wheeee, just havin' fun!' _was their motto. Not on my dime, not with my dame. I think not.

There was only one knobhead whose tires I wanted to slash, whose throat was begging for a gash of my teeth. Even with my, Bubba, and Junior's warning our last day of high school, nuclear fallout Newton had the audacity to skulk about Mama's. I'd seen him a couple weeks ago. Seething, on the verge of spoiling Mikey's dessert, I wanted to knock his cock-block off!

_Mikey Likes It! _Well, hell, if Mikey liked Life, he better fuckin' lay off.

Spotted-dickweed Newton drove a girly-girl Jeep Liberty. Fuckin' figured. Silver. Never was there a more glaringly effeminate SUV. My Bronco could ass fuck that shit and walk away still boasting a raging boner! I wanted to slash his tires with my razor sharp teeth. Not one for unnecessary self-restraint, I had done just that! And then sniggered quietly in the shadows as mullet-sporting-mutant cried giant sissy tears and kicked his tires while he whined for his momma.

Namby Pamby Newton.

Mute Newt. Eye of newt, the misnomer for his pween. Pathetic. The twatfuck was just begging to be bitten.

Newton and Jessica Stanley gave me full-on shudders of distaste; a faggoty Raggedy Anne and Andy.

Teenage mutant ninja turtle, and even _that_ was too good a sobriquet for said assmuncher. I quite enjoyed TMNT's on a Saturday morning…I could relate.

Ah well, I'd sealed my little kiss of death with my John Hancock on his ride: _Eddie Was Here _scrawled through the white dust of his rear window. And in tiny perfect calligraphy underneath, _Wash me, please._

Hadn't smelled him since. Go figure.

Shutting off last week's vandalistic fuckery, leaping down from the Bronco, I prowled to Bella as she shimmered in the late May haze that made the tar spin in heat.

_It's always a great day at Gerald's, even Sunday, but for a different reason. _Fuck's sake, they were just selling tires! Why'd they have to bring God into it? I was not impressed.

And, _Just Havin' Fun?_ Bella was surrounded by men in oily garb, their grease monkey fingers tingling for the feel of her flesh. I was not having fun.

Leaning down to the side of her face, I traced my palm over the smallest of her back, not before stopping to dive into the ass-dimples not-quite-bared above her short, jewel-purple, frilled skirt, marking my territory. I escorted her away from the car-talkin' cavemen, and moved closer to the garage where her Chevy was hoisted up and waiting for attention. And what to my wondering sight did appear, Bella's friggin' bumper sticker screaming sexual innuendos: _If you're going to ride my ass, the least you can do is pull my hair!_

Unbidden imaginings of Bella, bent over, back to me, naked and greedy echoed every wrench-toting scoundrel who had seen the bumper sticker and her. Wanting to stick it in her. I was most definitely _not_ having fun.

I scowled, Bella raised an eyebrow.

I looked pointedly at the words on the tail of her truck.

She tossed her head back with a laugh, sauntered to me, lifting her warm hand to my neck, "Oh, you like that, do you?"

My voice was a growling mess, "Yeah, me and every other guy who's seen it. Come on; let's get you out of here before I lose control."

I took her to Krispy Kreme, all the while pounding back images of her hot–from-the-snatch cream and all the ways I wanted to flake my fingers over her puff pastry flesh. Lick her out.

Bella devoured a cinnamon apple-filled donut, the scent of which repelled me. Until a golden drop of chunky gooey apple slid over her pursed lips and her pink tongue darted out of her mouth to catch the morsel before it could escape. _Jesus._ Pent up and beginning to get pissed with her silence, I crumbled a glazed donut into tiny piles of sticky dough--_there are better ways to get dirty than manhandling this nauseating shit_--and stuck my tongue hesitantly into the slotted plastic, shuddering when the aroma of coffee, thick and viscous, hit my taste buds. Whenever her back was turned, I snarled and sneered and jeered silently at the stupid human victuals.

Having polished off her donut and noisily slurping coffee that was laced with enough sugar to send a diabetic into decline, Bella decided it was time to tease me.

"What were you doing when I called? You sounded a bit…_breathless._ Were you with someone?" She narrowed her treacle eyes and taunted me, "It's okay, _I know all about you._"

I spluttered and spit venom all across the table, quickly wiping it up with thin, sandpaper-like napkins that I then shoved into my pockets, "What? No! I was alone. Wait? Huh?" She had me somersaulting through so many hoops that I just realized her last sentence and I almost cracked through the thin Formica table, aghast at what I thought she understood of my deadened nature before I remembered that I wanted to be unaffected by her, calm and cool. But my voice broke, "You don't say. _What_ exactly do you know about me?"

Her flip-flop shod feet unstuck from the grimy mess beneath the table with a reverberating suction. Then a _thud thud_ as she shucked them off her toes.

Bella peered at me with deadly decision, a touch of derision, "Your manwhore ways, Eddie. You thought I was referring to something else? Do tell, what other skeletons are in your closet?"

_Oh honey, if only you knew. Thank fucking Lucifer and the Archangels and God and the Antichrist that she didn't!_ _Hold up a doggone minute, manwhore ways? What the fuck? _I didn't know whether to be irate, relieved or swaggering that she'd heard of my many, many conquests. I settled for silent perplexity, sputtering nonsense and shaking my head in denial.

Toasty warm bare toes on manicured feet that had the graceful arches of a ballet dancer, and the softest skin skimmed up over my boots, tangled under the hem of my jeans and then the sole of her foot stole up and down my calf. My brain stopped. My groin bulged. I sank back in my chair so fast that it almost over-turned. _Oh fuck!_

"Oh, it's okay, Eddie. We all have a past. At least, from the rumors, it sounds like you know your way around _under the hood_." Bella flirting and fucking winking was goddamn killing me.

I moaned, lacing my fingers behind my head to fake nonchalance. Sprawled my legs out so that her foot could caress almost to my knee, and I fantasized about it slipping all the way up my leg, to my beating cock, along the ridges and veins and iron-soft flesh that covered it, unhindered by clothes.

Smirking, I met her lascivious look and hooked her foot from beneath my pants, held it gently within my palm, slithered my icy fingers around her ankle, and tickled the skein of flesh behind her knee that chilled in response. "Be that as it may, I'm not interested in anyone but you anymore." Both hands wrapped around her calf, the muscles clenching to my touch, I continued, "And I wouldn't mind seeing to your…._undercarriage._"

_That's better_. It was her turn to squirm.

Before I got completely carried away and fucked her senseless in the local Krispy Kreme, I escorted Bella back to the tire shop. Sexual tension thick as the atmosphere in the eye of a tropical storm caused gloomy perspiration to form upon the windows of my truck.

Watching, wrathful and glaring, as Bella paid her bill and collected her keys, I caught wind of the red rose the workers had left on the driver's side seat of The Beast. Fucking Gerald's Tires. That was their signature move. Downhome boys with gallant intentions. Cunts. Sneering, I was thinking, _pussy whipped knuckle draggers, did chicks really dig that shit? Aw fuck, _from the look in Bella's eyes, she did.

Letting her pull out ahead of me, I was appreciative that she gingerly merged out onto 17 North. I was then riled anew as the back of her truck bounced before me, toting that cuntery of a bumper sticker, snarling once again over the gross testosterone-fueled fantasies of those gear daddies.

When Bella turned in to L'il Cricket to gas up, I hopped out to do the honors. Lounging against the Chevy, I watched a sly smile cover her full rose-tinted lips. I was distracted momentarily by a raggedly dressed dude leaving the convenience store with four 40 Ounces parceled out in two separate paper bags, looking for an escape to the Land of Oz. He loped to his whining moped and balanced the sacks precariously on the foot treads before he putt-putted off into the late afternoon's diffused radiance, heading towards Snowden Community where the true owners of this land lived; the black people that had their rightful place among the plantation masses and had seen time and soil become distorted.

The nozzle glugged off. Knocking atop the cab, I nodded to Bella before heading back to my ride to follow her home.

We passed simple backroads, unpretentious homes, pride and poverty and perseverance. Southern pine and southern soul. Every other house had a picnic table or bench set up roadside with handwritten signs that announced the sale of _Fresh from the garden produce, Homemade Gullah Lunches, Sweetgrass Baskets._ Just making a living, getting by. A four wheeler barreled up the road, the young driver doffing his baseball cap in acknowledgment. In transit, quiet and slow and taking our time, we passed Mookie's Barber Shop; nuthin' but a single wide trailer. It was clean and the yard well-kempt, and the hustle and bustle of the full driveway hinting to a roaring trade.

Before we rounded the corner to Bella's house, there sat at the side of the road a church I hadn't noticed before. It blended into the background, clapboard dingy and grey, single story with an unadorned steeple. On the front porch, the peeling paint of which drifted in dusty sprinkles through the setting sun's rays, an old black man sat. Rocking. Pondering. Pipe in mouth and bible in hand. Without lifting his head he raised his palm to us. I slowed to a crawl, the words on the wooden sign coiling into my mind: _Our Mass does it on our knees. Bikers welcome._

Idling at the curb, not daring to debark, unable to control my evil urges, I didn't expect an invitation and was glad when none was forthcoming because for damn sure I wouldn't have been able to resist. I watched in the rearview mirror as Bella's slim figure advanced. Her lovely heart-shaped face was at my side, long feathery lashes lifting up to unveil the dancing deep brown of her eyes. Rolling down the window inch by wincing inch, I leaned out to clasp her hand, bringing it to my mouth to place a lingering soft kiss upon her fingertips that didn't even make a dent on my lips.

Bella's free hand came up to cup my jaw and I sighed into her hot touch that felt like a piece of Heaven. "My, my, chivalry's not dead after all. You've been very solicitous, Eddie." Her shabby fingernails rasped down the ropey column of my neck, sending a frisson of fear and a furious thrill through me, quickening my insides and causing a low-toned purr to nearly topple out of my mouth. "I'll call you."

I released her and she traipsed up the overgrown walk to the front door. Wrangled with demon and man all the way home.

_~~ll~~_

She didn't have chance to call me. Instead, Alice called _her_, from my house, presumably to rub it in, bratty little beastie. I banged my head against the table nearly busting it in half, feeling like a scared adolescent whose handjobs were too close to being discovered. Only it was more like life and death. I heard the transaction taking place over the crackly landline in our trailer. The wily witch invited Bella to accompany her on The Dark Side of Charleston Ghost Walk the following evening. Bella was surprised, confused, and then firm in her acceptance, and I wondered what the shit Little Miss Ghoul and Damnation was up to.

I watched Alice depart the next night feeling terminally ill. Quarantined and fully crazed. I turned to Bubba and Jazz, who were lolly-gagging on the porch couch, drowning out the din of night creatures with a supernatural arm wrestling match that groaned through the foundation as Em thrashed Jazz time and time again, and announced, "Let's mud-run!"

Distracted, never able to follow in excess of one thought at a time even as a vampire, Bubba was caught unawares when rascally Jazz took the upper hand and crashed his Neanderthal arm straight down through the rotten floorboards at their feet. "Winner!" He shouted, jumping up and wiping the victory grin from his saintly mouth, "One truck or three? Let's head, little boys!"

Now I was stupid with thoughts of Bella. _A-fucking-gain. _

Stopping in at the Seewee Nature Preserve, we spooked the coyotes loping around their fenced enclosure and watched as diamond backs rattled the fronds of saw palms, slinking back into the scrub.

"Braw, you thinking' about that Dawg again? It'll do you no good; you're already as ornery as a polecat with someone pissing on yer patch!" Em hoisted me up and threw me back into my ride, the grill encrusted with pluff mud splatters that would probably look like modern art to a New York City MOMA cunt.

Ripping up the dirt roads of Huger, we cut that shit up and let loose. I howled with pure pleasure, thinking nothing, wanting to feel just that. Opening up, our engines growled louder than our catcalls with Em booming, "It's hotter than a popcorn fart!"

In the boondocks, with boat landings, marshes, salt and brine, creek and cedars all around, dusk fell as our halogen fog lights impaled startled animals whose night scavenging was interrupted while we hollered and spun and wrassled. We tussled with our trucks, cutting donuts in the earth and laughing when our wheels loop-de-looped to cascade grime like a fountain of muck. A possum clambered away, _foul over-eager rodent, better fuckin' run!_

Slight shifts of sight sifted through me. At first, pale watery images until I looked more closely, clearing my eyes of grime. The omnivoyant oompa loompa. Of-fuckin'-course. At the Pineapple Fountain in Waterfront Park, I saw them walking along the harbor before cutting across Market Street and further inland, past little-known convenience stores, antiquaries, and brick terraced subsidized housing to the Old City Jail. Wrought iron gates of Philip Simmons hiding lantana and yew, salvia and Mexican petunias and begonias. Vinca. Toughened by drought, these perennials never died.

Shaking loose the images, I focused on here and now. Dirt and dick and _not Bella_.

And all Bella, all the time. Chronically wasting away.

I wanted to rub her out of my mind. Instead I was continually rubbing one off, all to erotic thoughts of her. Her scandalous antics at Krispy Kreme had not helped one fucking bit.

If Bella was an automobile, she'd be a hardcore Pontiac GTO, Gran Turismo Omologato. The first muscle car, designed by De Lorean and forever enshrined as that time-beating auto in _Back to the Future_, exactly what Alice was doing to my guts. I didn't know ass-up from inside-out, and I felt rather than knew that this whole thing with her was something akin to _pot kettle black._ A tight, sleek piece of machinery, Bella was all American. Delicious, taut and raw. Begging for a drive. Pedal to the metal, liquid propulsion, fabrication of then and there, here and now, and she would be hard-earned. A smooth ride with her engine purring over the thrust of my piston.

It was a sad, sad day when Pontiac closed its doors.

It was a dismal day when I could not surpass the sylph-like twinge of Bella.

My dipstick throbbed in everlasting fast forward; nightly, hourly for the well of her oil pan. Her chassis was finely tuned and perfectly detailed. I'd had my fair share of Bare Naked Ladies but it wasn't really my cuppa'. I just knew that Bella's racetrack would be glorious, everything it should be in its majestic well-tended reddish brown glory.

_Like all good hillbillies we were defined by our vehicles. They personified us._

Rose's was a 1967 Chevy El Camino quarter mile dragger. Iron oxide red, obviously. The sight of it sent Bubba into cargasms, and the split front seat of that small block Chevy had gotten more mileage than the revving racing engine in it!

I laughed and sneered at yuppidom with their Audi's precious asses protected beneath white car condoms.

Us downhome boys were more likely to keep our cars on blocks, the very same kind used to hitch up the DW, beneath the corroding lean of the carport while gay Christmas lights in obnoxious colors twinkled all year round dripping from the eaves. Keeping up with Joneses and all that shit.

Fairy lights and the felonious fey faerie was again corrupting my head, bringing me to a full stop. Now within the garrison of the Old City Jail, a fortress built in the late 1700's used both as a prison and asylum, Alice should feel right at home. During its 150 years of operation, the gory gothic castle had housed criminals twice the number of its capacity, and had seen the deaths of some ten thousand inmates. Gaolers tortured the convicts with whippings and deprivation of nourishment and senses. Burnings at the stake, the branding of flesh until the singe of sweet skin melted all over Alice's nose, incinerating like brimstone into my own; hangings and the incarcerated being drawn and quartered were daily horrific occurrences. The dysfunctional dryad watched it all as if it was taking place right this very second, and she left the curtain open so that I too knew the terror of the ghosts that walked therein.

Turning a darkened corner, I watched through Alice's eyes as Lavinia Fisher, the first female serial killer in America, laced her fingers around her own throat, caressing the livid scar of rope that had twisted life out of her neck. The spectral white of her sudsy, gauzy, circa 1800's gown clung to a breeze colder than our own skin, shifting in swirls of death.

She nodded to Alice.

Criminals, pirates, and mad motherfuckers haunted Alice's steps, either nodding in admission of another undead or flying away upon feetless legs in recognition of someone more lethal than them.

I felt the answering grin on the spite-filled mite's lips, superiority swelled her. Insane appraisals ran through her head, until she stopped, coolly, on Bella's body.

I had no choice but to eavesdrop. Like an exorcism, I stopped breathing and listened through the worldly chirps and splashes and trills that surrounded me in this fucked up dichotomy of a place. My eyes turned to bitumen and I gagged back bile and venom as I listened to snippets of their conversation.

"Are you spooked yet?" Alice questioned, feigning disinterest and diffidence while she knew she had me swinging from the meathooks in a bloody abattoir.

Pale ghosts withered away from the rusk of her spoken voice. Shying away from Alice, they looked back with pining to Bella. As did I.

"I'm not really scared of dead things, Alice," Bella was certain, her voice a clear pistol shot that fired through my synapses. Alice was initiating Bella, hazing her. Filled with creepy cunning, she smiled at my next actions, knowing that I understood nothing of what went on inside of Bella's brain. Sludge splished around me as Junior and Bubba gunned circles that radiated closer and closer to my standstill. Silently, I conveyed my need to know Bella's thoughts about me to the malicious munchkin. Goddamn if the bitch didn't listen! _Finally_.

Simpering, strolling closer so that I could see the stalagmites of gold that dripped down the dirty brown of Bella's irises, Alice grazed her touch over Bella's bare arms and asked, "So then, what do you think of our Eddie? Has he kissed you yet?"

Not threatened, not one bit, Bella bit back a gurgle of laughter and answered, "I don't kiss and tell. And I think our Eddie likes me more than I do him." I was floored! Gutted! Instantly maimed, until a loud hiss hit the inside of my cerebrum, conjuring up a subsequent vision; the bubble of Bella's chuckle turning to something of frills, and light. And her shockingly sexy wink that said the opposite of what she had just uttered!

The lights dimmed and the stage darkened to drear. I was pounded with fear for what I could not see. Forbearance took the shape of me speeding up to sideswipe Em so that our trucks jolted apart and spumes of creekbed manifested into the air over us like a geyser!

I just wanted to ram Bella.

I knew no more now than I had before.

Fuck. This. Shit.

I called down the spirit of Dale Earnhardt, Jr…he was #88. I was all 666. Him, National Guard. Me, hiding from the Volturi Guard. Amp Energy drinks to me getting amped up on moonshine and the smell of a blood I couldn't fucking erase from the back of my throat. And a woman that galled me.

But always dicking off.

No less than Emmett. Invigorated, giving new meaning to _Gator_ade, Bubba was the incarnation of Tony Stewart, #14 for the fourteen thousand ways he was versed in killing and screwing. Sponsored by Old Spice. Soap-on-a-rope. Manly.

His was a monster truck, of-facking-course! A good ten feet tall, give or take a few depending on just how high he'd jacked up his tires on any given day, and baby blue. Just like Rosalie's eyes, _he said_, because, beneath his smoked missile-resistant exterior, Emmett was all marshmallows. Mr. Fuckin' Stay-Puft himself! I was surprised he could even get that sissy shit up!

Immaculate, well-waxed, polished, and babied, Jazz's ride was now gleefully covered hood to ass in muck. #9, Kasey Kahne. #69 for Junior. Formerly the pussy eating, dick drilling EOF, Jazz had had a thing for young, sweet Kahne back in the day, speaking words of _sugar cane and candy sticks and purty purity that he wanted to spoil._ Sponsored by Budweiser, King of Beers; Jazz, the King of Cuntrification and gentry alike, pre-Alice.

I limped once again beneath the cryptic catacombs of Alice's apparitions. Thigh-high marsh spewed up sweetgrass blades and croaking frogs, while I grappled to remain in one piece amidst this preternatural wasteland.

Through the warped and tarnished looking glass, spots of mildew marring the mirror, Malice in Hinterland towed me under again into the morass. With prophecies that were neither here nor there, but now. At least to her. Not the revelations of future that I mistrusted nor the painful horizons of her solitary past. These visualizations were like movie reels that whirred and clicked, old timey, with possibilities. But she regaled them as predictions already played out. A talkie. Silver screen and scree.

This was Alice's Bella, not mine.

Her hair was a wild tangle, like a sorrel's mane unleashed as it flowed through winds of open pasture. The plains of her eyes were frostbitten depths of red ochre clay, but chariots of cliffs and pueblo dwellings were desert brown and still held a semblance of humanity, not the insanity of a newborn. Though it still crazed so close to the surface.

In Alice's screaming mind, Bella was already one of us. Vanity quivered at the vision of her, all gleaming and burnished and gilded in glitter. As she spoke to the nefarious nymph, Bella's voice took on a tinkling edge that held infinitely more appeal. Aphrodite died anew.

Regal majesty saw Bella standing tall, her slight slouch straightened. Imperial, almost, with her brilliant blue skirt, her susserating white top, colorings of royalty. Queenly. Of import. A vampire.

Guided into Alice's head, I brokered slim allegiance, needing to know more. All I found was this morsel, written as if with quill upon parchment:

_**You will mate, once and forever, with a woman that will be the culmination of us all. Or our ruination. **_

The jet ink spiraled away, like the toxin from an octopus hidden in a yawning abyss, meeting the undertow of water with a last flourish:

_**Swan…Cullen…Volturi. **_

Set in stone. A proclamation. Parceling out her gift for farsightedness, Alice shuttered the window once again. Leaving me retching, ill-fated.

Vexed, with brackish swamp up to the undercarriage, I completely stalled out.

Bubba hollered across stumps and swill, "Beware of Dog, Eddie!"

Jumping out, I hopped to a knobbly Cypress knee then leapt onto my hood, "It's not the mangy mutt, Em, it's Alice," my voice echoed the unnatural hollow gaping of my insides.

They pulled up alongside me, took in my hurting landscape and shouldered against me.

Jazz pontificated in the name of his woman, "You don't know her; she's just trying to help you."

Most unmanly, unarmed, unmanned, a fucking veritable eunuch but for my monkey spanking that made me know my junk was intact, I whimpered, "Help me? By laying me out on a bed of nails? Do you have any clue what sorry ideas your woman is preying upon me right now?" I gripped my head and took it to my bent knees, growled against the dirt and felt its colder-than-me slush paint my face.

I felt raped. The migraine of _her_ premonitions, permutations of dread and all I fucking wanted killed me.

"What the shit is she doing to me?"

"Never matter, dear son. Shut that shit out; let's fuck up this fen, for chrissake's!" Em declared. _Fen, what the hell? Was he reading the Roget's again? _

I couldn't disagree at this moment. I yearned for roar and prowl and the claw of eight-valve engines.

Jazz looked..._tired._ For the first time since Alice had come to him.

How could I fucking hate Alice this much when she was every-fucking-thing to my brother?

Time took me down. And out. Of my head.

Heartened, bearing a heavy heart that had long since made the voyage across Styx, I shouted and cajoled and threw both Em and Jazz down into the dirty, "Ride on!"

Spill and swine, boar and lore, legend and earth that had seen Natives and slaves and plantations, uppercrust, lowclass, credit-card wielding humanity…the Francis Marion Forest had _never_ seen the likes of us! With each wheel stuck, each axle drowning, we gave a quick shove and carried the fuck on. Our lights like those from Heaven, illuminating God's Green Earth. Only it was more monotone to me.

Gun racks and stacks of exhaust pipes. Toting the highest class weaponry, custom-made refined killing machines that were just like us; we didn't need them, per se. But what the hell else was there to do?

Who had the biggest aerial? Me. Whose CB licked up the airwaves the loudest? Mine.

Who had the best rack?

Bella, hands down.

The damn drapes, all visions of Harlot O'Hara once again, opened across my cortex. The larcenous lunatic was in the house.

Bella squeaked like a timid mouse as a golden orb weaver spider scampered across her bare toes. _Fucking great, what was the meaning of this?_ So she was au courant with phantasmagorical beings such as shapeshifters, lupins and who the fuck knew what else, but was squeamish over insects? _Jesus._

Bella's voice hit me like a tornado, her words like gale force winds, "I like that Eddie doesn't mince his words. And I'm a sucker," -- _yeah, you and me both --_, "for a bad boy."

Alice's eyes widened and my jaw dropped. Bella smirked, "When he rode up on his bike to the diner, _shew_. I almost dropped those damn plates of key lime pie!"

"But there's something I can't quite place my finger on. Mystery. He's cool, and I don't mean in a James Dean kind of way either. _Icy_. You all are. His movements are refined, but sometimes I glimpse this fastness, a speed that stretches across him, shivers over him before he closes it off. Even his skin, though silken, soft, holds something harder beneath. When I kiss him, his lips are more than just beautifully sculpted. They're immoveable carvings around mine."

With her own fingers to her mouth, lightly, as if remembering our touches, Bella breathed out, "When Eddie looks at me, he seems to think he should know everything about me. And is equally delighted and…I don't know. _Repulsed_ that he doesn't. I can't figure him out. I'm not sure I want to. What if he really is just an asshole and there's nothing more to him?"

A tremor lifted little goosebumps on her arms, a reaction to her thoughts and Lavinia Fisher herself breathing down Bella's neck. Alice warned her off with a slight narrowing of her eyes that glowed to reddened embers with threat.

I wanted Bella to stick to that line of thought. Not try to find out the truth.

Shaking her head, "None of that matters now. I can't stop thinking about him; my body cannot resist his touch. I'm in it for the long haul, Alice."

The banshee burglar encouraged Bella to continue, "Why is that?"

"In essence? He is one fine specimen of a creature!" Bella's chin tipped up as she let out a lusty laugh.

_The Hell you say!_ A revenant jailer clanged upon the metal bars of a tiny cage that held a lamenting human shackled in his own defecation, the scrim of ashen voices receded and approached, ethereal and sinister, and whirred away again. Whispers of caskets and persecution and agony making mankind a thing of deprivation. The iron bars of the cells were not an effective gate against the phantoms.

And Bella, not one friggin' iota as scared as she should be. Of me. And mine.

Sedge and sediment and slanderous thoughts mired me.

Jessup Jazz, his expression again timeworn and bleary, regarded the wild state of me. He knew I had to own this and refused to give in to my silent begging to throw some relief over me, and instead gave me platitudes, "Time, just give it time."

I crowed, "As if I have anything else. Ha!" I wanted to broker peace, hating this relapse in Jazz, but was unable to stop myself because I was such a vicious cruel bastard, "Your anarchic archangel is _killing_ me, Jazz." Sudden elucidation stunned me, "_You know everything, don't you?_"

Not shirking his duty and still sitting next to me in the commune of solidarity, Junior looked me in the eye and nodded succinctly.

"Shit." I should have known. There would be no secrets between those two, but now there were between us. My shoulders broke forward as I relayed the scene Alice had let through her portcullis, "She didn't mean for me to see this. A foreign place, a piazza, crumbling ancient architecture and bright midday sun. _Cloaked figures garbed in death and travesty stumbling about as if blinded by apparitions._ That is exactly what I saw in her head. And what I heard? _A hummingbird pulse beating out of a dead chest. _It's gotta' be the Volturi, I know that either Alice was or will be there. I fucking don't know whose heartbeat that is!"

I wheedled, "Just tell me; was that in her past or our future?"

I looked up sadly when Jazz laid his hand across my clavicle, he stroked down once, his eyes grave, "I can only tell you that Alice was preordained to come to us at this time because of Bella every bit as much as for me."

"What the FUCK? But-" Jazz shook his shaggy blond head that was a filthy streaked quagmire. His lips shuttered closed like a corner shop shutting doors in the small hours of dawn, his eyelids fluttered and he took up a mute recitation of Civil War compatriots, some dead and some still wandering. An impasse.

He impressed his palm once again to my shoulder and intoned, "Just go to her. Go now."

Bubba jolted against me, slapped my ass so hard that I was pushed off the roof of the Bronco, "Go on son, spread your scat."

Holstering my fear, my inhibitions, my hope, I kicked out of the bog.

_~~ll~~_

Alice had effectively cut me off when she gathered I was on my way to the Holy City of the South.

Following their trail that was sheared like dim fragrance on the Caribbean breezes of the Triangular Trade -- slaves, guns, molasses, hemp -- I came across Bella in the cool, dewy, bitten brick and mortar cavern of the Circular Congregational Church. Dust ate up the rounds, motes piled beneath the pew she leant before, forehead sighing over ancient polished oak, her widow's peak a precise punctuation that sent my thoughts stuttering, fondling the strands of her earbuds as if they were a rosary. As my fallow shadow fell over her, she looked up with a devious grin. Devoid of shock at my presence, her eyes lit from gravity to gleeful rejoicing. Revival. Baptizing her in my smile, I noticed that underneath world-weariness melting from the toast of her eyes, Alice had not harmed Bella. Bella's sprit was intact. The smooth pile of her lips made me long for a confessional for all my sins, the smirk that jerked her mouth to one side caused me to reckon that unforetold transgressions were nigh. The hoary frost of my flesh dissimulated and leaked venom like sweat beneath the lust of her rapacious glaze. Knowledge glinted therein, tearing me up. Pelting me afresh with terror at what she understood of my being.

Having stopped at the trailer to briefly clean up, I was at least fresher than when we had shared a dance--_and a ride_--at the Kick'n Horse. Bella however was resplendent. Incandescent. Glowing. Dolled up for her trawl downtown, the skirt resting so lowly upon her hips was a message sent from on high; flouncy and fluid and that stately deep indigo massaged the tops of her knees as she stood, slowly, in front of me.

Sunnywedges raised her two more inches so that her lips blew breath across my chin instead of my Adam's apple, and let her ivory toes twink out. Colored in subdued pink, they alone made me lick my lips. Higher up, Bella wore a loose-fitting halter that tied behind her neck, a gossamer white web that showed up her blush. Denuding her shoulders, and most of her creamy back. Not even hiding her nipples that were cerise and raised. I wanted her all over my mouth. The scale of her spine made my fingers ache and want. Valleys of flesh rose and fell. Her breasts were just heavy enough and unclothed beneath her top, the sides of which were so low along her ribs that the hills of her tits robbed me of breath. The enclosure of skin over bone, its dales and swales, only painted anew the fragility of her.

_And my desire_.

Indecent.

Stone sarcophagi sighed as rays of settling sun hit their buried ruins and caused perspiration. I cleared my esophagus and felt the dampness of sweat cooling on Bella's limbs that brushed mine.

Alice's visions had been edited. Distinctly telling me only what she wanted to impart, little of what I needed to know.

Bella scared me. Controlled me. Scarred me. Worked my frozen body up into a frenzy while she called lethargy down upon me. The slow southern sultry call of her blood probedover me and the glaring stronghold of her mind crucified me.

Adorned with the sickly-sweet smell of fonts filled with gigantic trumpet lilies that would die within the day, the altar was otherwise empty. Pollen stained oak and cloth.

The swishing hush of dishabille and flowing god's gowns drowned Bella's butterfly heartbeat. Receding footsteps faltered over a misshapen doorstop.

Then solitude. Ringing and clear.

Alice was toiling in the graveyard, placing her clairvoyant steps like a slithering snake amongst oleander and dragonflies. She knew I would come. Dinner-plate-sized maroon hibiscus blooms and a bright grey anole billowed out its throat in an orange-red ellipse.

Bella and I were alone in a sanctified den of Christendom. Her call to me was infuriatingly demonic. With bones buried beneath our feet, re-interred markers lining the ancient walls, history abounding, I felt all of my years. Aged and weary. Yet anxious and young!

Quieting my mellow liquid voice, it still rebounded along the simple ionic columns and fractured off the pervasive biblical scenes of the stained glass centerpieces. Jesus winked at me through a hail of sunrays.

"What are you doing here, Eddie?" Bella's palm found my chest, that grotto of nothingness. I raised a breath through my alveoli, wanting to appear human. To her.

This was the thing I wanted! _Could I really have her?_ Steady and deep as crevasses, just as molten, I answered, "As long as I'm going to Hell, I might as well do it thoroughly." A fresh freeze met me, the whine of cherubs and Mary and the stable in Bethlehem almost broke apart at my infraction. The perfume of myrrh and frankincense, Holy Water wanted to leap out of the baptismal font. I would just shake it off.

Minute seconds had passed, none of it unnoticed by Bella. A sheen of little bumps foiled her flesh.

"I can't stay away from you," I declared, knowing that all of what I was, everything I hated being and wanted to become was evident. As prominent in my caved-in face -- the frown, the downturned eyes, the foul mouth, the eyebrows that met in the middle with mourning -- as my noticeable erection that clinched my jeans.

I laid my forehead against Bella's. And Alice lifted her head from her insurrection with the long dead.

Spraying her fingers over my cheeks that hurt with passion, Bella lifted that last inch. A little pucker to the tip of my nose. The air of her was a pelt I wanted to roll around in. Lowering, slightly, she licked her lips, and then mine, "Then don't."

Fleet footed, I took Bella to me and made to the altar. Fingered the tapestry of the Jesus cloth. Touched the silver goblets that were lipsmacked with human guilt.

I turned her whey body to me, crushing the curds of my curse. With fists opened, I folded over her like a stole, working my fingers under the curtain of her hair. I let it rest between my fingers before I braided it against my knuckles until I had two stuffed handfuls and my forearms were saturated around the helix lengths. Helios' dying sparks again glimmered like gemstone through the chromatic panes, spilling red and blue and light and shadow over us.

Alice lingered amongst the borage and heliotrope that withered over graves, outside.

Smarting as if from mythical garlic and stakes to my heart, I could contain myself no longer!

Bella's _Mmmm_ gored me. Like a bull to a toreador! I latched my mouth to hers, bent her back and aside by the braid of her locks over my arm, up to my biceps that were scored with her living heat.

Fire.

Ice.

She licked my top lip and I suckled her full, gorgeous, puffy mouth, sucking the ripe curves in between my own, and vowed never to touch another women. Ever. Again.

Her tits tickled my chest; the staggering flags of her nips scraped my own through the thin veils of material.

She made her way to my chin with a flattened tongue, then stood on tippy toes to sweep that tongue across my eyebrows. _Oh fucking hell._ Searing from within a black hole, I took her waist in my clasp. I stood back and watched my hands work over her ribs, slipping into the feathery insides of her top. Fingering along the naked eclipse of her breasts, underneath the curve, my index fingers hooked and were sealed in the fiery envelope. Unsupported, her tits were pear-shaped, weighty at the bottoms and sloping at the top. The beast in me turned savage at the brush of her nipples under my thumbs.

_Amazed._

Moans stole the sacred air and deities fled.

Gripping the back of her head, all awash with tresses, I placed Bella against my lips once more. Deeper. As hard as I dared to go. Laving her tongue that was a supine thing against my own. A tangle of saliva and venom and Bella; I fought her tongue away from my sharp teeth time and time again, a primal snarl groaned out of me as she simply stole my tongue into her mouth and devoured it, keenly swathing the top, the underside, and flickering all over the tip! The electricity of her strokes stoked my guts, tensed my muscles, made the hardness in my jeans twitch as I twisted her harder against my cock.

The fire that burned me was just like the dry foliage igniting around witches' bodies in this town that had known so much injustice.

I pulled back with nips that plucked the creases at the corners of her swollen mouth, the full center, the Cupid's bow. _Oh Jesus Fucking Christ!_ I knew I'd said it aloud when the boom of a toppling bible echoed in this cavern of religion.

Bella's blood made quick cruel work of my lust. All of a sudden.

Releasing her curls, I stepped far back, resting my hips against the pipe organ, sending out a burst of dirge.

"You can't deny this, Eddie," again, Bella sauntered forward.

Between my legs she took up too much space. Hot limericks and tender kisses. Divine retribution. Savior. Sex.

The antecedents of my manhood, the artifacts of my soul.

_Jesus Christ!_ Oh, _he_ heard it. Loose-leafed psalms hit the floor en masse.

We nuzzled to the dissonance of my ass grinding over the keys of the organ.

Breaking for breath, the paucity of which I did not need, I curled my merciless fingers along Bell's scalp.

"I know you," she hushed against my sternum.

We squandered minutes that would last endlessly, pleated like a goose down duvet around each other. Just suck and sound and sway. Taste. Touch. Pleasured. Gentling.

And I laughed at the irony of my life. Kissing a human woman, a demon man made of coal dust and flint--instead of liquid and breakable bone-- standing at the dais, surrounded by God, and surely going to hell. I whispered into the nautilus of her ear before tucking a kiss to the pulse just beneath her lobe.

An "_Ahem_" broke our embrace and Bella winked at the lay reader preparing scripture or some such shit before her laughter bounced off the middle of my chest. And wept carillons of giggles over my body.

I chuckled, feeling something akin to the resurgence of life.

I promenaded her to the vestibule. Arches of carvings, bitten-off figures that had seen better days, as had I.

With a promise of something, I sealed our fate with a sigh to her forehead and lick upon her lips.

The misguided Mary Poppins stormed into the foyer. A scuttling scarab. A carapace of crazy. Outfitted in fingerless gloves of the finest kid leather, delicate lace simpered up her substantial, wraithlike arms. Her blouse was Peter Pan gone awry. Slashed and black with the collar towed up to her peaked ears and the sleeves billowing out like black wings at her shoulders.

She smirked at me and in her sweet and low, liar voice scathed me, "What are you doing here? I don't believe you were invited."

_Bitch._ For damn sure she knew I'd come.

The coffers of her mind were again closed to me.

The crazy curios that made me suffer were blank slate.

Aliform, Alice winged with enigmas.

Ignoring her, cherishing my time with Bella, feeling _treasured_, I seated my mouth against Bella's quickly and then bade her adieu.

With jaunty pride I made back to my truck. Once inside, I lingered amidst King, Queen, and Broad, and like the dickhead I was, I honked my horn at jaywalking troupes of tourists.

When I'd wasted enough time and made more than a few pedestrians shit their pants with my roaring display of cat and mouse, I headed back towards the Arthur J. Ravenel bridge, longing for the old Cooper River overpass with its rust and bump and groans. It looked for all the world that the tiny, tinny thing was put together with nothing more than spit, gum, and lashings of duct tape.

Rounding the sharp curve that fell up onto the bridge proper, I saw a dainty figure at the roadside; halted, hip cocked, leg hitched, thumb out.

Hitting the brakes so hard that smoke curled from beneath my tires spinning rubber on tar, I stopped at Bella's side, her thumb one inch from the door handle. She stepped back as I leaned over and popped it open, dire and dead low, I gritted out, "Get. In."

_What the fucking hell?_

As soon as she was buckled safely in place, I slammed on the gas and converged with the other automobiles, flinging fury straight to the Lilliputian leprechaun. My asphalt eyes angered, narrowing and noxious, fucking nauseated. Shecaught my call and beckoned me into her brain where she was smiling all satisfied-like in the looking glass, fuckin' mad as a hatter, her orbs like limp piles of boiled peanuts with a hint of hunger for the hunt.

_She meant for this to happen. Scary goddamned fairy._

Bella, meanwhile, had settled in, made herself at home. Flicked open the glove compartment and rummaged through its guts. Read my registration and insurance card as if they were tomes to my soul. Reached deeper and pulled out used shotgun shells, handling the casings with fingers that knew their way around a weapon. With a final foraging she closed the lid, sat back, and lobbed out a gusty giggle, clearly pleased with something. I had no fucking clue what.

All the while she willfully ignored my glower.

I thought of all the dreadful things out there. Not just a vegetarian crew of vampires. Not just dens of wolves that she, apparently, was in leagues with.

N'awlins was the Mecca for were-men. The voodoo heathens had only holed themselves up in Goose Creek because of the bayou's mass exodus on account of Katrina. Fucking Bushes Sr. and Jr. with their Middle Eastern wars be damned, they had nuthin' on Mother Fuckin' Nature. Now being all shamanistic and bloodhound-like, the canines in The Goose were far too close to my neck of the woods. Why the fuck did they have to home in like pigeons on my turf?

Bringing with them their legends of the Cold Ones – _oooh, scary _–their ancient feud with North American vampires, their witch doctor's ways, and mawkish Mardi Gras, with marches of Cleopatra, Morpheus, and Hermes. The hoodoo hounds had far too many ways and means; this couldn't just be a coincidence.

_Could it?_

Podunk Punk-ass Pup.

Even the goddamn pickpocket pixie knew that Bella knew, before I did. I pounded the steering wheel so that the truck veered off course for a millisecond.

"What the fuck already, Eddie?" Bella swept hair over her shoulder and turned to me.

"There are other things out here, besides your flea bitten friend, that you need to worry about!"

"Ha! Just say what's on your mind, why don't you?" Bella was not laughing, and neither was I.

"Hitchhiking kills."

"Eddie, for fuck's sake, I thumbed it halfway down the country, I've done it before and I'll likely do it again. So give it a rest," she sighed a quiet '_Dad'_ beneath her breath and I shook the steering column about near off.

Lightning bugs fledged in the forests that raced past. All light leaked from the world, this was my place, my time, my narrow-sighted vision. The hue of the day sucked dry and made monotone without the sun. Little nighttime insects and their marauding noise scraped my brain from without the cab. Lit by the ghastly glow of the CB radio on the dash, Bella looked ghostly. Glowing. One of us. She had no right to be here, and I had no right to want her the way I did. As my helpmeet, a vampire.

"Jesus H. Christ. You think I don't know that? That you can take care of yourself? I'm so fucking glad that of every fucking _nobody_ in the galaxy, your mind alone is a vault." I squirmed over the black leather and defied destiny one more time, "Doesn't mean you have to do everything on your own." I needled out, hoping she would overlook the most revealing part of that stupid ass rant that was most assuredly about to bite me in the ass.

I frowned hard and concentrated with unnecessary determination on the road ahead. The moon had prodded across the dome of the sky. And I hadn't even noted it. Usually I traced its node working towards dawn, inch by inch, second by sleepless fitful second. Fistfuls of nocturnal emissions all to the name of Bella. Now far off to my right, the hook shunted clouds aside and lit them with a slurry, semi-colored glow.

Fully surprised, Bella pulled her long legs up to her chest and turned completely in her seat. "What?"

I chose to be confused, and went for the lesser of two evils. Wolf trumped vampire, just this once, "What do you know about your friend Jacob?"

"What do _you _know about Jacob?" At my silence she relaxed her thighs so that her calves dangled over the median of the front seat, her heels resting atop the inseam between my legs, "You don't know anything."

The saucy woman was teasing me about matters of life and death?

Riled, I answered, "I can smell him. He positively reeks!"

Bella dug her heels in and her toes scrunched under my legs as I spread them wider. I couldn't help but be turned on. "What? I know he's got a little B.O., but that's just uncalled for, really," she traipsed one foot closer to my crotch and rolled her eyes in exasperation.

Placing my glacial hand on her Achilles tendon, I tried to explain without giving away too much, "I have a very refined sense of smell. And Jacob, he's Purina's wet dream! _Shit._ I hope the rabies-ridden Rottweiler has had his shots!" I couldn't believe I was actually regaling this to Bella. She was getting more and more pissed. No longer was her foot a sensual appendage. She dug in, seeking to wound me. Not at all the siren she'd been at the church. And all because of the cur! Even my dick went limp with her castigating glare. And that never fucking happened!

Her hands clenched around anything within her hold as her body went rigid, the same shape it would take in orgasm, but now in inordinate distaste. Hate? _Fuck me._ With grim lips she spat, "Just say it."

Holding her trembling calves that were trying to carve into me, I stared out my window, "He's not entirely human. That alone I can understand. But worse," I coughed a dry laugh, hissed at thoughts I did not want and looked straight at Bella, "He's a matted, flea-bitten boy. A fuckin' werewolf! Were you even going to tell me?" I ended in supplication.

Bella berated me, "I wish you wouldn't do that, make fun of him. I don't care what Jacob is, what supernatural shape he takes. He and his kin are family to me. So just don't go there." She was hardcore and full of allegiance and alliance. I knew where I stood. It felt like the bottom of the pack.

My only reprieve? At least that had taken her off the scent off my other blunder.

_Or not._

"Speaking of secrets, there's more to you than you let on." This time she sighed full up to my ear and lengthened her limbs over my lap.

As I leaned away from her tongue, she only lowered it to my craven neck. Driving became rote. Thought was smote. _Nearly._

I was in the dog house, and I wasn't even talking about Jacob anymore!

"Say it, Eddie."

"I know more about most people than I should. Just not you," I swerved around the curve to Matthis Ferry Road, and more fully upon her lips.

Bella was all matter of fact, "Well that explains it."

"Explains what?"

"You always look at me so quizzically, as if you should know…_me. _At least, when you're not…" she sighed and sought my crotch beneath her ankle.

Dimly focusing on the ribbon of road, my hips arched up from leather. I wanted to buck the shit outta' her!

My skin was like Elgin marble, and her touch like runes tossed over ruins. Prim and sexy and all titillating. The wolds and glens of her feet, then legs, and then breasts cleaving me in half.

I glanced at Bella, "Shit."

"I know what you're thinkin'."

"Do you now?" a quirk of eyebrow.

"As if you could resist me. I'm the world's oldest courtesan. _Woman_. Everything about me invites you in, my voice, my face, even my smell."

I licked my lips and watched her sliver fingers on the move as she continued, "My neck and shoulders." Lingering at the base of her hummingbird throat, dropping down to whisper over her nipples, "My breasts."

She raised a leg which was naked beneath the short feminine willow wisp of her flirtatious skirt, "As if I would need any of that!"

Bella's swan neck arched back in the gloaming moonlight, her pulse drummed, her lips crimson cushions that I needed to kiss, and her voice like a Chinook breeze, "As if you could leave me. As if you could deny me. I am designed for you, Eddie." Looking me straight in the eye, the striations of umber in hers deepened and strickened me, "Destined for you."

My breath failed. Then re-started as if defibrillated out of flatline. With my lips poised a millimeter away from Bella's, she barely spoke the following words that fell like brail across my brain, washed like rain over my mouth, "I've never wanted a man so much in my life."

The pillar of my cock was total rock. The flotsam and jetsam of Bella's susserating words, her touches; I could not let her have the upper hand.

"What about you? This whole time, staring at my hands, licking your lips over my fingers simply turning the wheel." I dropped those digits down and flexed them, taking the helm between my knees with ease.

Reconnoiter, recognizance, renaissance. "Your nipples topped up when I touched you earlier, and you stopped breathing, _completely,_ when your eyes dropped to my pants."

Bella was gasping and I was done with breathing altogether. Upon my lap, her legs opened, for me.

Hands back to steering, driving, not allowing myself to touch her, not the way I wanted to. "Let me tell you what I'd like to do to you, Bella."

With one draped wrist effortlessly turning the wheel and the other tolling her own fingers between her opened legs, "I want to make love to you."

Pushing her palm so that it met the frail lace that covered her, I leered as Bella's eyes dipped into dew, and her fingers sent themselves inside of her panties.

I could not touch her like that. Not yet. _I am so fucked up!_

"I want to…_fuck you_."

There was nothing logical about this. No formula that could make Bella x Vampire equal anything but a disastrous scenario…_but that didn't stop me._

With eyes of lightened ochre darting to my erection, the girl knew how to take care of herself. I walked her through it. Encouraged her with little motions and veiny words; _pull out, thrust in, that's right, feel that?, swirl your fingers, touch every side, inside, open your legs further, let me see you, I need you, so pink, engorged, I have to touch. _Every so often her fingers bunched up and the thrust of her knuckles pulled damp fabric away, unveiling a gander of whirl and whorl of flattened hair imprinting lace. I could see every damp strand.

Sounds that should never be heard in public made a hash of my head. Pulling into the moist glen of a roadside rest stop before we became just another statistic, I cranked down the windows and cut the engine.

Bella's fingers were fully inside of her. Her eyes did not leave mine.

I fell on top of her, straining, struggling, and staggering. My hips pushed those digits deeper. The brush of knuckles and a flattened palm over my cock caused me to cry out!

The top button of my Strauss pinged off and hit the dash, denting it with vigor. I hoped Bella was too far gone to notice. My breath was choppy, as if I actually needed air to survive, and my dick was turgid.

I couldn't withhold myself. With fingers limping and then larking up from her bruised knees, I drowned over hers, and wet folds of feverishness. At the entrance of her pussy my fingers fuckin' trembled and she called me on it with a twizzle over my cheek, "Hey, stud, never felt a woman before?" _Oh god._ I moaned and slid my hand over her mons. Burning my flesh with her heat. Pale pink lace, as I'd surmised, brought to mind shells of Botticelli and the birth of Venus.

Perfume and squelch. Two fingers so deep inside her that the groaned through her throat were nothing compared to the way she swiveled all over me; hot wet ridges that sucked my fingers in and out in a rhythm that fast increased. One of hers entwined with mine. Making this the most erotic moment of my life.

It all became too close, too fraught, too fucking much for me to bear! Her blood, so pulsing sweet and floral, her arousal that I sniffed like an animal all salty wet and sweet-tart…too many feelings. I needed to get her the fuck out!

Out of my Bronco. I needed to air it out!

Out of my mind.

Out of my pants that she'd hardly even touched.

Bella cursed hard and came in tight loops against my fist. Her head met the armrest and one tangled above to grasp the belt, "_OhjesusfuckingchristEddie!"_

Riding my hand and arching against my palm, I gave it to her the only way I was capable of, at the moment.

Coming down, in a circle of hips that made me hurt all the more, Bella watched my jet eyes that were the ensign of dangerous nightshade.

Insanity and sex, and all that I could not hope for.

I sat away, pressed my head to the center of my steering wheel. A weak _bleep_ of horn sounded. As Bella situated herself, I couldn't help watching her. Famine. Famished. I would lap it all up no matter the cost.

The sundering of my Strauss was loud and clear. A slight rent in the seam of my crotch made its presence known.

Startled, Bella awoke from her post-cum coma.

Another prestid from my button-fly pinged the dashboard and settled on the floor mat.

Her hand reached towards my cock with intent. Like manacles, my fingers bound her wrist to air, "Don't."

"What _are_ you?" Mischief sprinkled her eyes like tired confetti.

Undaunted.

Cussing so that no human could ever hear me, I shook my head in denial. Saccharine swills of air sent to befuddle me and I negated Bella.

No Way. No How.

"I'm not a werewolf."

"No shit, Sherlock."

I started the truck up. Bella was languid, and this side of chary.

Mistrusting.

I was still tender and erect.

I just couldn't face this conversation…_yet._

Silence. Something I usually welcomed. This time it maddened me.

_All the way to her house._

I rolled alongside the police cruiser in her drive. Helped Bella out, belted beneath all that had transpired. I didn't hold her hand or take her elbow. Not daring touch.

Just following her steps, that were strong and purposeful.

At the storm door I gave her harsh words of goodnight, her in her thinnest dress and me still seeing her glorious orgasm in my head.

She smiled yet, and stilled my leaving with words a blissful question, "What is this?"

She smarted as I tightly gripped her elbows.

Afraid, no longer empty, I released her and beckoned her inside, without an answer.

I couldn't even kiss her again.

Stomping back through the sponge of un-cut grass, I opened my door.

Slammed it back shut.

I pounded the roof so that it nearly caved in, and looked askance from under my upraised arm that felt estranged without Bella in my hug.

Bella was already stepping across the threshold, into safety. From me.

With the wind under my feet that hovered above ground, I sped to the porch and yanked the portal open.

One slim line of light elongated into a disproportionate triangle, landing at my boots.

Wood splintered against plaster.

Bella's two steps into the entryway became naught.

Space disappeared.

_Oh yes!_

It was wrong and so fucking right!

With no shock, no sound, no query, she was in my arms. Soothing one need while making another gather more forcefully in me!

Lips and hips and lunges.

Skin, cloth, coil, and depart.

Sigh and sift and weep and silt.

Blouse and skirt, jeans and 'T'; nothing but human fabrication that I could destroy in an instant.

Lips and tits.

Hips and dick.

Enlivened.

No longer enervated.

My eyes were soiled kingdoms.

And Bella succored me in her ramparts.

_~~ll~_

* * *

Lovely words and alerts too, a whole lotta' thanks! Give Eddie more, he gets all hot and bothered over them.

**Seriously. REVIEWS = CHAPTER 8. Without such a long wait. Hop Fuckin' To It.**

The next Rebelward Without a Cause is a do-not-miss. While the first two were silly piss-your-pants manifestos, the upcoming outtake is all about Alice's haunted past. Written by my friend, a fabulous author in her own right, Rowanmoon, Alice is full of devastation and dread. Rowanmoon just started posting her story _Broken Doll_ to ff so I urge you to check it out.

Music, including _Superman_, by Santogold and _Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 2_ is on my profile along with a couple creepy Charleston tidbits for this chapter.

Finally, I want to push you all towards _The Cygnet and the Strigoi_ by CapnSureYouAre, for which I just wrote a review on The Fictionators blog, as well as _Carpe Noctem & Fiat Lux_ by queenofgrey (winner of the Best AU WIP in the Indies) and _Begin Again_ by C-Me-Smile. Go check their summaries and have a read. Also, V (vanessarae) just started her own fic, _Seventeen Cakes! _We, me and Eddie and the DW wenches, are all lathered up for her!

The Dead Thread on Twilighted Forums…_last call_, *jokes*. Come play.


	8. Gators, Glades, and Airboats, oh my!

Thanks to stavanger and kinolaughs., as well as the lovely kassiah, for the Dead Confederates feature on The Little Known Ficster! Link on my profile.

Once again, my undying gratitude to you, V!

Thanks (and so much more that should probably stay on the thread) to all the Dead gals that fluff my feathers and sooth my insecurities, and spout all sorts of insanities.

Tracey, this one's for you.

Disclaimer: Eddie, Bubba, Junior, and Carl = mine. Twilight = SM's.

Now, let's have some laughs!

* * *

**Gators, Glades, and Airboats…oh my**_**!**_

_I will fight the spirit  
With a sword in my side  
She found a way out  
Crack my rib  
Wait to die  
I think I know you best when I sleep  
I think I know everything_

_Me and my brothers  
We have tongues sharp as knives  
I found a way out  
Make a noise, close your eyes  
I think I talk to you best when I sing  
I sing about almost everything_

_Grace taught her daughter  
Daily on  
God how I feel it  
Fed her pride to your feet  
I'm gonna leave you the first chance I get  
_

_Oh god I need it  
I was wrong again  
Take me to the river  
And make me clean again  
Oh my god  
Make me clean again  
And oh my god  
Let me see again_

_The River, _Manchester Orchestra

Kisses.

Temptation.

Smeared lips and her bowlful of hips twisting against my dick. Under my hands, in my palms. A handful, a mouthful, a smartass Bella-full.

My belly was anything _but_ full.

Blood--sweet, floral, acrid, tangy, marketable--rose up to the topmost turf of her skin in a sophistic infusion, making my teeth itch to dig straight into the juicy padding of her mysterious crushed lips.

Like crinoline, stiff horsehair and prickly under-skirting, the timeless echo of slaughter raced after and almost overtook erotic impulse.

My fingers were two seconds away from caving in her soft skull as I ripped our lips apart.

I stopped breathing. Bella's gasps were gusty bellows blowing tasty wind, enflaming the desire for my food and my fuck.

My knuckles cracked in disappointment as I pulled away from the darkest lure, brought my curled fingers back from bone I could shave through like a trowel to black sod.

Stilled. Stepping back. Bella put one hand to my chest and one behind her to the wall as a brace, effectively throwing those tits into sharp relief. Storming through killing wishes and blood-tainted instincts, desire roosted again.

With a smile that went from deadly to downright lethal, I positioned Bella's hand over the empty left side of my chest, daring her to understand the nothingness that was there. Eyes crashed into mine, like a whitetail through underbrush. Skittery. Jumpy. _Do you hear that? Silence, Bella._ She fisted my shirt as I leaned back down to her, a devious grin fringing my mouth. Pulling away from the wall with her other arm, she halted my descent and her smirk surpassed jitters. The queen bee was back, with her hiving voice that buzzed fresh venom throughout my arteries, "That was one hell of a goodnight kiss, Eddie. But Charlie's awake, and you've seen the shotgun."

A groan of the La-Z-Boy, a stuttering of half woken thoughts – _What? Who won?_ – and yes, Daddy was definitely home.

"I see. In that case, fair Bella, I bid you goodnight," my voice smooth as jadestone. I brushed my mouth lightly against the verge of hers, savoring the way her lips dented against mine, the weakening of her knees that made her grip more tightly to my shoulders. I brought her by her waspy waist flush against me for a quick sway against my flinty hard cock, and followed up with a swift lick across her knuckles after I had loosened her hold on my shirt.

Deer in headlights. Nipples on highbeam.

Jaunty and satisfied, I flew down the walkway.

Irritated, horny, and dissatisfied, I fled as if the very hounds of hell were nipping at my heels. Spinning out on the soft shoulder, lifting dust and rubble in my wake, I executed a flawless three-point turn and roared away.

Em was his usual sweaty asscrack self when I got home. Full of, _"Looks like you saw a ghost", "What's got yer tighties in such a twist?", "Might as well pound the keys, eh? Since you're not pounding Miss Bella. Don't worry; I cleaned her up all proper-like after I fucked Rose on top of your precious baby"_. Fucking devil spawn. I didn't even have the energy to galomp his thick head.

I fell to my bed, heavy with dread, weighty with my cock.

Throwing my arm over my forehead I listened to the skipping feet of sleep that evaded me, the trolloping titter of Bella's walk, and her hot heart.

Bubba jumped over me, trouncing me from my majestic misery with just three words, "Gators. Glades. Tomorrow." And went away, muttering, _fucking emo cuntnugget._

_~~ll~~_

May 1st. Gator season opened with a mighty congregation of reptile wrasslers, hard-drinkers, non-thinkers, and a battle of the fittest in Florida's Everglades. Lazy motherfuckin' Team DNR, Department of Natural Resources, was all about using the bloodthirsty hunting instincts of man to do their dirty work in keeping the alligator population curbed. It was an open call to honest-to-goodness, sanctified, big game blood and we were all about that, year after year. Raphael James, our local anchorman, never failed to warn, "It's dangerous, and you can't hunt in public places." Fucking killjoy.

Barred from openly setting upon scaly flesh and tensile jaws, we followed the hillbilly exodus south, celebrating the Second Amendment amidst the fear mongering lynch mob mentality that rippled out, ignorantly, as backlash from Obama's presidency. A coalition of crazy-ass country-folk. Hell, even sow-faced Palin had a pink rifle, and she probably used it against the endangered Beluga whales. Cross-eyed bitch-face. I still thought she was having an affair with our Guvnor Fuckface Sanford. Of all the douchery of the world of politics, I wouldn't have been surprised one fuckin' bit.

Geared up with gator gigs, snares, our exquisitely crafted bows, and camping kit, equipment that would never see the light of day or the darkness of night as brute force, might, and incisors were all the weapons we needed, the Bronco moaned beneath the payload of mortal props. I smoothed the dash and smiled at my dirty girl, "Don't worry, honey, I'll take good care of you."

We stopped for Junior first. Four doors down and a heap of squalor that was fast becoming a woman's keep beneath Alice's klepto ways; it looked like a spooky rendition of Halloween had shat all over the single wide! Black and bruised violet flowers overflowed old stone flower pots, gauzy gloomy curtains blew in and out of the half opened windows. Called to auspicious Alice, ravens and turkey vultures cultured the few live oaks that shaded the abode.

Jazz dappled down the porch and made it to the cab with mini-maliciousness herself spiked on his back like a soothsaying scorpion. Cupping her pronged ass, he peeled her off like lint, plucking her limb by limb off his body. _Eddie needs this, baby._ His thoughts fuckin' horrified me! What was I, a goddamned charity case? His utterance, tumbleweed quiet and meant for her ears alone--although we could all hear it clear as horseshoes clanging the metal post, "Three days is nothing compared to the centuries without you."

They made me seasick. And longing was an illness that spread its virus like scurvy among vitamin C deficient sailors. Queasy.

Fucking finally, Esme was back on point with her in-home dry cleaning routine, so we stopped there next to pick up our lovingly laundered, ironed, starched, folded, and packed bags. They were waiting, color-coded – _anal much, Esme?­ _– at the bottom of the stilted house's stairs. Red for Bubba, blue for Jazz, black kiss of death for me. _Surprise._

It seemed that Bella had phoned Maw and asked her to go easy on me. And also hinted that I apparently didn't know dick from fabric softener. I should have been incensed, but instead I was even more enamored.

The thought of Bella, almost _naked_ Bella, hanging out the laundry on the line that spun from clapboard to back fence, clothespins closed in her syrupy lips, and puny, powerful hands clipping her unmentionables next to my under things in the open air made short work of my cock within my boxer-briefs!

The 'rents came down to the drive to see us off. Shuffling his cowboy boot-shod feet, looking longingly at the ride that was ready to roll to the Orange State, Carl was fettered to Esme's side by her hand holding him back.

He hadn't been allowed on our annual sojourn for two years, since we deposited him back at the Bluff reeking of ganja, cheap dimestore perfume, through no fault of his own, and with ineradicable Sharpie-drawn devil horns masked upon his face. _She hadn't even seen the pictures of him dancing atop the gator cage, in less than decent dress!_

Relenting, she released him with a kiss that would have made me blush and shooed Carl away upstairs to gather his things.

Then maw Esme turned all Fury on us, stalking up to the truck and rocking it with hand to Em's open window, "Boys, you fuck up my man again, and I will have your asses roasted on a Volturi spit for Sunday tea, you got me?"

Bubba bit his tongue, _fuckin' Esme just fuckin' said fuck and ass!_ He curled away from her royal surliness and turned his guffaw to me. I swallowed my own leer and manifested Mutant Newton, "Y'asm. Carl will be returned in immaculate condition."

Jazz didn't bother to talk, just thought, "_Pussy whupped."_

Whether he was referring to me or Carl, I didn't know.

Em caught wind of the silent conversation and added his two-cents, "_No doubt, bro."_

Dickheads.

I heard Carl upstairs throwing clothes into his hold-all, muttering to himself _one pair of boxers will do, Esme won't know. I'll just turn them inside out, right as rain and fresh as meadows!_ Man after my own heart.

Virtually flying down the steps, Carl javelined his bag into the back and leapt in next to me, a tomcat on the prowl. Esme's face was at his window, pulling his mouth to hers, with a succinct warning instead of a kiss, "Behave yourself, love."

_What a woman!_

"Where to, boys?" Carl was keyed up and bouncing up and down like a fuckin' kid about to dive headlong into a pile of cotton candy before hitting a jump castle.

Skinflint, tightwad Jazz thrust his damp toothpick to the side of his wide mouth and opened the latest edition of the Mouldie News, "Says here it's Blood for Guns day at MoneyMan Pawn!" Suddenly he was as excited as Carl, nothing made Jazz harder than pinching pennies or pushing head first into pussy.

Bubba scratched his dark hair, frowning so that his dimples disappeared and I feared for the fate of his grey matter that he was crushing his skull against, "Color me stupid," – _yeah, because that's a real stretch, Em _– cuntass threw his elbow to the back of my head and it was like _he _could read _my_ mind, "But it don't say nothin' about Venom for Muzzleloaders, does it?"

Seated next to me, Carl smiled and I grinned back as he laid one arm over the backrest, cricked around to the boys and hefted up the cooler at his feet. Shaking it so that the slosh and fumes of blood filled the interior of the Bronco, Carl welcomed Em and Jazz's approval. _Blood for guns, yes indeedy._

Chevy's, Fords, and Dodges were parked willy-nilly at The MoneyMan. The owner, Arlyn, was holding court with the local news team, "We like to feed 'em and bleed 'em." _Now we're talkin', Arl! _"The gun-toting citizens have taken to our blood drive like fish to water! We average ninety pints of blood at each of our seven a year drives. This time we're _shooting_ for a hundred!" He snorted at his own pun, a dribble of brown fetid baccy juice landing at the reporter's pristine Cole Haans.

Since Arlyn was busy being congenial and witty with the media, we caught up with the missus, Lurline. She was poured into Wranglers that pushed out the paunch of her muffin top and did nothing to disguise her camel toe. Blond bristly hair was teased up into a hornet's nest, hairspray like shellac holding it in a helmet around her face that was all sorts of Ronald McDonald got into his mommy's makeup bag; lewd red lips that were outlined way too fucking far beyond the boundaries of her mouth, bright blue eyeshadow up to her eyebrows that had been plucked to within in a millimeter of their lives!

At Carl's velvety smooth, "Ma'am?" she turned to him, loose-lipped and blood shot eyes hooded with instant yen. _Here we fuckin' go._ Trying for a purr that sounded more like machine gun rattle, Lurline staked out _paw_ and batted her blunt clumpy eyelashes at him, "What can I do you for, handsome?"

It was a square dance of epic rock-a-billy proportions! Carl explained the situation, sidestepping, two-stepping, retreating as Miss Lurline dosadoed and promenaded ever closer. _Round-yer-partner_, Carl stood firm and faced her down. Until her hand crept up his thigh, almost to his cock that had probably been hoovered up into his body with fear and disgust by this point, while she made bold, "What kind of heat you packin' in there, hon?" _Oh no, she fuckin' did not!_ Em hit the floor, Jazz's toothpick pinged out of his mouth and pierced the tire of a nearby pickup, Carl gulped and internally cursed us all, and I choked on laughter that tasted so much better than possum blood!

We were the center of attention now, as per fuckin' usual. I looked at the gathering throng, taking stock amongst them – _one mullet, two mullets, three mullets, four; boor, redneck, filthy skanky whore! _Like shooting trout in a barrel.

Finding his balls that apparently still did exist, even after being sucked alongside his Johnson up into his groin, Carl flattered, "Ma'am, _Miss Lurline_," his award-winning, panty dropping, sheepish smile coupled with an unyielding grip on her wrist to keep her roaming hand at bay, "What about them guns?" Yeah, he friggin' dazzled her.

More like a bull-moose facing a logging truck barreling down a mountain at full clip than a delicate antelope, Lurline stuttered and blushed a most unattractive shade of fuchsia, "It's a bit unorthodox," – _fuck me, she dropped a fifty cent word! _– "but as long as it's legit, I don't see a problem with it."

Fuckin' A! _God Bless America._

Carl finished the barter of plasma bags for munitions without further mishap and we finally hit the road! Em hollered, Carl whooped and hit the roof with his fist with such vim that it replaced the dent I'd made the night before at Bella's; Jazz stuck his hand out the window and waved his Stetson at passersby until it was torn from his clasp by my revving up. Watching it tumble along the trash strewn asphalt, crushed by tires, he just smiled and shrugged.

Save-A-Lot in West Ashley, a.k.a. West Trashley, just the other side of the Cooper River and the poopshoot that led to Georgia and beyond, was our next stop as Bubba held forth about the backwards hunting tactics of our neighboring village idiots, "Now them Hanahan boys? They don't know how to hunt, that's why they put out corn!"

A quick trip inside found us stocked up on those heraldic dark blue cans of Spam-bait. Alligators, the toothsome bitches, loved that shit! Goddamn reptiles.

All the while, wanting to focus on the boys' weekend at hand, I was bottomed out like a shrimp trawler in dry dock.

Churlish and childish. Bellicose and belligerent. Unsettled and done for.

I needed to man up, and regain control of this…charade. I was not human, full fucking stop. Bella was. Bella _was_…_everything!_

Battered, dashed, destroyed. Hollow without her. Hating myself with her.

The full hungering call of her took me up and shook me into effervescent fizzling-out pieces, a shaken can of pop that went flat on opening it.

And just the thought of her again had glycerin drops of poison, pale and yellow, leaking from the small untouched lips at the head of my weeping dick.

Glum, trying to be glib, I flicked the dial and cranked the tunes. ROQ 101, _Tune in tonight at 7:30 when we're talkin' guns and divorce._ And cue Ozzy's _Crazy Train_!

'Course that only made me think of Little Miss Rocky Horror Picture Show and her latest undoings. Making as if Bella was to be permanently inked upon my flesh, an indelible tattoo. A vampire in the making, a paranormal being of purport!

I felt utterly confused to know that Alice was here not just for Jazz but also for Bella. And that she was to the lynch pin in our future.

Completely asinine with all I had laid at Bella's feet, in between her thighs, over the rounds of her breasts, and inside of her wet swollen greedy pussy.

Spitting nickels that she knew _something_ of me. Understood every-fuckin'-thing of Jacob, that asafetida skinbag!

Played me for a fucking fop, and still I went back for more.

Jazz, meanwhile, was played out. Settled. The twin angels of retribution and peace had washed over his tired tyranny and left in place a satisfaction that smelled of sun-up on the high plains, covered wagons instead of covered graves. Undiscovered trails and gold rush and the high of the deliriously unknown.

The war of fucking and killing, the warden of newborn armies, the jailer of men and women's virtue had been freed into the sorcery of mad Ophelia Alice.

I had lost him, let him go.

Junior and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Destroyer of flesh turned dreamboat. I looked back at him and he doffed his head in acknowledgment.

Tranivans passed, laden with illegal immigrants looking for the next crop, some more dosh to send home to their families. It was feast or famine. Winnebago's crawled along sonorously, rumbling Old-Age-Pensioner-Meals-on-Wheels.

To Jasper County, through the long winding drive to Cuckold Landing, shanties selling peach preserves, the last Piggly Wiggly outpost that found Bubba slapping a _Get your pig on!_ bumper sticker to the ass of my ride. Ashepoo River caused snickers all around.

We sped into El Cheap gas station just this side of Georgia. I wound my window down and waited for the asshats to go about their business, which, frankly, was pissing me off all the more.

Em came loping back, biting his inner lip to hide the impish dimples that were caverns in his cheeks. His hands were hidden behind his back. Dickdribble had obviously been boning up as he managed to keep his thoughts secreted from my raiding mind. Following him, Jazz strolled back with an armload of newspapers. Carl had a bagful of Doritos, salsa and Coke. Who the fuck knew why! The man clearly needed to get out more.

Glancing at Junior, I sent full-on queries to him because I fuckin' knew Em was up to something idiotic. The mellow toff simply settled back, opened the broadsheets, licked his index finger, and spread the cheap ink over his digits as he began to read. Only the telltale twitch of his left eyebrow and the way he chomped his latest toothpick in his jaw alerted me to the fuckery underfoot.

Carl lit up his shit-smelling Cohiba and popped open a bag of chips. Sinking his face in and sniffing hard, the man looked like he was at the precipice of the best smelling twat on earth, about to dive into that muff! _Holy Cunting Christ, he really needs to get out of Dodge more often!_

With Points South in my sights, I heard a guttural "_Phhllbbtt! Eew, bet that left tracks!_" What. The. Fuck. Shoving his mammoth paw in my face, Em shook The Fart Boy in my line of vision. With his t-shirt tolling up over a beer-guzzling belly, sitting his flatulent ass on a cracked leather miniature La-Z-Boy, sporting a gigantic pull-thumb that, when tugged, caused Fart Boy to wisecrack about bodily functions, this hand-held two dollar toy had the boys rolling about in gales of laughter!

"Pull this, Eddie, never mind your much maligned tackle!" Bubba met my disbelieving glare and jerked the thumb again, _"Rippety-doo-da!"_ An explosion of mirth melted the interior of the Bronco.

Moron.

Moron with a fuckin' gas station toy.

Jazz sat back and looked on, a tranquil smile on his cool face. Even so, the fuckin' rehabilitated EOF'er didn't suppress his serene delight, "Gotta' love Novelty Island, bro," as if he knew all about this beforehand. And he probably did, care off Alice.

The hits kept on a'coming. All the shitting way to Brunswick, Georgia.

Jazz did his fucking easygoing bit and sought to distract my ever-growing incensed ire with a lovely little piece of pure Americana from one of his newspapers. Smooth as sin and Sitri, beautifully fatal in voice deed and look, Jazz began his reading, "Now listen up, boys, as I regale you with the tale of the Open Carry Celebration, brought to you by New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky. _Come celebrate our rights as Americans as we promote responsible gun ownership_," Jazz paused for dramatic effect. "BYOG, _yes, bring your own gun, _to the congregation on June 27th. We'll say mass and inspect ammunition before God and Mary!"

Bubba hooped and hollered, Carl leaned into the back seat for a better look at the article in Junior's lap, and I smiled at the fucking cuntnundrum of this place. Running his thick finger along the lines, Bubba found a gem, "_Gun ownership falls under the scope of Christian liberty,_ and one of the parishioners, a certain Dallas Southern -- _what the _fuck_ kind of redundant name is that?_ – adds, _There's also potluck and a one dollar raffle for a brand spankin' new handgun!_"

Jazz pushed the space invaders back into their seats, cleared his throat and intoned as seriously as if he stood behind a podunk podium himself, "Brothers, it's all about God and Guns."

_Amen, though leave out the God bit and we'll be all good._

Passing through the last Georgia exit before the border of Florida, a forty foot tall sign in the shape of a steeple stabbed the air, shouting to the masses: _This Church is Prayer Conditioned!_

We sped down dry interior roads through scarcely inhabited regions. Lean-tos doubled as houses. Vegetation turned brown with drought. Lakebeds were fractured and dry, looking like the craters of the moon. Filth, poverty and the endless scrub was nothing but redneck and Brahman bulls.

We neared an open plain filled with weedy leggy goldenrod and crackling broom, and there in the middle, prowling grouse, mice and armadillos, a magnificently sleek Florida panther hunted. Swilling about my tongue in an instant, venom lubricated my entire body. I squealed out onto the soft shoulder. The back tires of the Bronco skidded down the run-off slope into the field. I was out the door before the breaks even locked and Carl threw it into park.

Coming to my ears over the meters I'd already crossed, Jazz shot out "All yours, Eddie!"

With the shriek of my truck, the mountain lion had become quarry. Her admission that I was the alpha in this scenario was instantaneous. The long tail whipped once, twice, before she pulled up her lean muscled legs and the pads of her paws stove into the dustbowl earth. Did not matter. I was faster, hungrier, deadlier, and the most formidable adversary she'd ever meet!

Crossing a sea of wild sage crumpling beneath the midday sun, I pounced on her back and we were thrown into a tailspin. The musculature of pure power rippled in my clasp as I tackled her. Landing on top, I felt the air knocked from the twin chambers of her lungs. Relishing her panic, feeling her hind-legs scramble against soot and soft silt that simply gave way, I commended her survival instinct even though it was a moot point.

At the feel of her fore-claws seeking purchase into my face, I outright laughed. The knife-sharp lunges were sweet caresses rather then gouges.

And then I knew a touch of guilt. Cat's eyes. Knowing that death was at hand. Her tail twitched and beat a sharp tom-tom rhythm into the tussocky hillock beneath us. I soothed and stroked and shushed this beast whose jugular pounded meaty musky blood. Steady of hand, I stole my palm over the deceptively soft fur, expecting bristles. My eyes widened and I clamped down to keep her in place. Cruelty coiled. I lowered my lashes, smiled a grim upward tilt of my lips and tucked into my dinner. A growl turned purr became acquiescence. Blood flowed bright into my parched throat and down to my aching stomach. Warming me from the inside out as only Bella's touch could do.

The desiccated corpse lolled away. Looking away, up to the sky that was the blue of deep forest birds circled by fluffy, sheep's wool clouds, I licked my lips. In my world, this is what we meant by a Hungry-Man Dinner.

Rejuvenated, I took to the truck and luxuriously, satiatedly, drawled our way further south. Past a full-length bumble bee-yellow school bus that was jacked up on the biggest fuckin' monster tires known to man, untold fences-horses-cows, the World's Largest Flea Market, and a Godzilla-sized rocking chair on the side of the road advertising the local's answer to Cracker Barrel.

Meanwhile, Bubba held forth on my debilitating case of blue balls. _A-fuckin'-gain._ He was such a tired Cro-Magnon! Thankfully, Carl made short work of his oft-repeated one-liners and past-their-sell-by-date jokes, succinctly owning his title as mentor, sire, _paw_, leader, "Much as I like a good handjob, wank-off, and roll in the hay myself, I don't really need to know about your sticky wicket, Bubba. Nor do I want to hear about Junior's _trailer's a'rockin' so don't come a'knockin' _ways. And don't even get me started of Eddie's knuckle shuffle!"

Stern and scowling, Carl looked at each of us in turn, "I am, after all, your father. And your women might soon be my own kin," he brought that obsidian meaningful stare back to me.

I gulped.

"So knock it off with the cock commentary, and let's get us some gators!" A resounding sigh of relief was exhaled all around, just like teens that had been let off the hook.

Leave it to Bubba to goad him further, "Whatever you say, _paw_. We're just funnin'. Lay off the fuckin' Cheez Whiz already!"

Even I had to laugh at that.

_Or not_, when the tables turned to me.

"Eddie," again with the fatherly tone, Carl stuck his nose back into the revolting bag of fusty Doritos as if it was Elmer's Glue, "We do need to talk. Now Bubba and Junior, they're with our own breed. I don't rightly know what's going on with you and Bella, and it's been called to my attention that you have made a name for yourself amongst mortal women," a smug smirk graced my mouth, "but I've never seen you like this." And the smirk faded away.

Fuck. Dad talk? I was one hundred and some years old! Cringing, I back-pedaled furiously, "Carl, ain't nuthin' going on. And even if there were, what are you worried about?"

"It would behoove you to listen, son," Oh holy hell. Carl had his lecturer's voice on. Take me back to the Old Country and put me in school boy's britches. "_You_ might not want to admit that she has caused a change in you. But we can all see it. And you need to be aware that making love to a human woman is a different animal altogether than fuckin' one of them for the fun of it." _Oh Christ No! Please, Carl, please don't break out the vet-talk!_

I looked back pleadingly to the peanut gallery, and the one fuckin' time I needed the cunt-scrubbers to join in, they were all agog and silently nodding their vampire bobble-heads in agreement. _Traitors._

"There are consequences and repercussions for your actions. You might could inseminate her. And that would bring into play the question of a hybrid. Though it's never been documented, cases have been heard to exist. Most likely you're shooting blanks, but we could certainly test you, to be on the safe side." _What the fuckin' fuck? He wants to test my spooge? Oh hell no, that ain't happenin'! _

On the inside I was chagrined, blushing, stammering, and completely friggin' unnerved. On the outside I was exasperated, "Jesus Fucking Christ. Can you _please_ just stop with the Immaculate Misconception speech already? I haven't been _intimate_ with Bella. I don't even feel like I can. _FUCK!_" The steering wheel shook as I growled. "She needs to know what I am before I can even entertain that idea. So, _please, please, _do not plant that seed within my head."

The silence that followed my outburst was telling in its nothingness. Their thoughts flashed so quickly that I feared I might have a seizure. _Love…He's going to tell her…Endanger us…She has no ill will…Love….Never seen him like this…_

The mist of their words competed with the scrub racing past the windshield.

In an act of camaraderie, Bubba lumped his fist against my shoulder, "Whatever you need, braw."

Raw and aching with emotions that were ripping me to shreds, want and devotion, family and feed, fucking and love, I blinked my eyes and trained on the horizon, more falsehoods spilled forth, "You know what I want? I just wanna' pick up our airboat already and suck some croc blood!"

They weren't fooled, and neither was I.

_A family altar can alter a family_ laughed at me from a church notice board that was ugly, dirty, and in need of complete overhaul_._

Further up the road, with one glance at the banner hanging half off the chain-link fence that housed an aluminum shack looking just frail enough to be constructed from Reynolds Wrap, we'd reached destination Diamondback. _Hog Traps and Airboats!_ This was just my kind of retail therapy.

Jumping down from the lifeguard's chair – _what the fuck? _– that sat square and center amongst boat parts and scrap heaps, Curtis hiked up his Wranglers, thank fucking shit covering up the cleft of his ass. His shorn flannel was missing its sleeves and apparently all of its buttons too as it was undone over the pregnant-looking swell of his beer belly.

The lanky hair on his head was long, unwarshed, a hideous mess that did nothing to hide the growing tonsure atop his crown. Splitting his lips, spitting a loogie that sizzled the hot dirt, he bared his decaying teeth that were black or entirely missing.

His thoughts? _Fuckin' flatlanders. _

I snorted.

His words? "Cullens, I presume. Howdy-do? Got yer Diamondback ready to load." Nodding to each of us in turn, he started to lean forward to shake hands with me but shrank back as soon as the sun glinted off the metallic brutality of my feral smile. He shuddered.

Ambling off around the corner of his shed, he called back, "Back 'er on up," before he was cut off by a rattling cough that caved his chest. Bent double until the spasm passed, Curtis hunched up and shrugged, not deigning to finish his sentence.

Behind the falling-apart building, we found our new toy. Camouflaged for the subtropical realm of the Glades, all shades of dull and vibrant greens, our custom-made airboat was a thing of beauty. Jazz and Bubba hauled her to the hitch and balled her to the Bronco while I shot the shit with the man himself, "Now, it's all regulation, but I'm jist curious…what do you boys need with all that extra flotation?"

"Well, I could tell you, Curtis," and I looked him over head-to-toe, playing like a tomcat with a timid mouse two steps away from death, "But then I'd have to kill you." The joke of my words and smile was maimed by the honest threat in my narrowed eyes and tilted head, eyeing him up. I could have felt badly considering Curtis was about one shove away from shitting his skivvies, but he was infirm, diseased as if with tuberculosis, coughing blood into his indigo blue hankie that remained yellow-stained with gore even through the laundering of his missus. Yeah, his days were numbered.

An hour or so later, finally at the gates of Heaven on earth, we showed our passes and permits and were ushered into the unending acreage of bog, hardwood hammocks, subterranean creatures, wading birds and swimming prey. Like a greenhouse, the vegetation was thick, rich, odd, and breathed heaving wetness into air that was so dense it was difficult to move through it. It was the night before Open Season in the Everglades kicked off and everyone and their brother/daddy/uncle – usually those were one and the same -- was there. We set up camp amongst the good ol' boys and a fair few women as well. Clad in teeny bikinis, mere scraps of cloth that, when wet, hid nothing from the imagination. And I was sickened to discover that I didn't want to stick it into a single damn one of them!

We played tourists for the remainder of the evening and ran off down to Big Pine Key for a snack on gamboling Key Deer. The small antelopes were a tasty appetizer.

What with the sharks, barracuda, stingrays, and manatees, the Glades were a veritable smorgasbord of Captain D's and Davy Jones' Locker. Carl loved him some seafood and was beside himself for the festivities to begin. I was heady with the feasting to come, ready to forget Bella.

Tensing every muscle of his sloping body, Jazz strolled to me as I was setting out the PBB for the night's debauchery. Under his breath he muttered, "Whoa man, I'm picking up some major Mad Dad vibes."

_Christ on a cracker and fuck's SAKE too!_

Shoulda' fuckin' figured that shit-on-a-shingle Sheriff Swan would make an appearance here!

He entered our ring of rotting souls, crossing the boundary that effectively shut out human silage from vampire marauder with no compunction. Carl one-armed him around his shoulders and offered a stenchy cigar, clipping off the end. Lighting up, Chucktown dipped his head at us brothers. _Well, well, well. What have we here? The Cullens and crocodiles. _Those éclair eyes of his were silty doughy insight as they came to rest on me.

"Evening, Sheriff," we both knew who would win the battle of testosterone should our hands meet, so neither of us bothered.

He took to the wooden fishing stool adjacent to my mildewed lawn chair that groaned as I moved a bit further away from Bella's goddamn father.

Proffering a beer, I saw him flinch just slightly at the brush of my fingers that were icier than the half-frozen bottle of lager.

Pulling a long draught, chitlin Charlie observed us with his keen eyes. There was some sort of surprise therein, but he effectively shied his thoughts away. Egging me on.

With tics and shifting of weight and tugs on their drinks, Em, Jazz, and Carl wandered about in perfect facsimiles of human beings, setting things a'right campside.

_Cat got your tongue, son?_

_Actually, it was the other way around, Chuck._

I grasped the armrests and sat up tall. Who the hell did he think he was, calling me out? I swiveled to Bella's daddy, and put voice to my novitiate concerns, "I don't mean to pry, sir, but who is Bella staying with?"

I was hoping to hell that he had not left her alone! Understanding my stupidity at abandoning her like this...far too recent visions, like hallucinogenic figments, of the Nomads' visit conjuring all sorts of horror!

Charlie stretched his legs straight out so that the forest of flame melted the soles of his boots, "Boy," –_ I got more than half a century on you, Chuckles; 'tis I who should be calling you 'boy'! _--, "She's nearly eighteen. I think she can take care of herself."

_Do you now?_ "Oh, really," I sniffed at his deceit, "Then why did you ground her last week?"

His subsequent words were duly righteous, "And weren't you the one that brought Bella home in such a condition that I had no other course but to put her in lockdown?" His eyebrows were sketched high and his mustache arched over the question mark of his mouth.

"With all due respect, I was being a responsible citizen, sir," I inclined closer to drive my point home, "Which is more than I can say for you. You have no idea what kinds of things are out there."

Internally, Charlie scoffed, _kid's full of shit_. Externally, he provoked, "And you do?"

I wanted to show him just what I was talking about, force him to understand the gravity of the situation and seriously consider Bella's safety. My words, my tone, were incisive as a straight blade against an adolescent's cheek, "I've heard tell about the killings at the mill, and the mangled corpses found outside of Myrtle Beach, and I know y'all can't tell whether these deaths are being caused by man or beast."

_Sum_bitch_, the little motherfucker's got a point. I'm calling the Blacks._

_Oh fucking hell! _I groaned back into the chair and hammered my head against the back of it. What I really wanted to do was pick the damn thing up and hurl it into the distance before running all the way back to Cainwhore!

His chipped-beef eyes were shrewd as he confirmed my worst nightmare, "That's a point; I'm going to give the Blacks a ring and have Bella go over there."

_Fuckfuckfuck!_ I hemmed and hawed and sounded like a pussy, "Um, do you really think that's a good idea? I've seen the kid, Jacob; should Bella be staying with him?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but Billy will be there to chaperone. Make up your mind already, Eddie!" With that, he bade us goodnight and went off to hammer one more nail in my suffocating coffin.

With one succinct phrase, _Make up your mind already, Eddie,_ Chuck had pinned me down like a dead moth on a mounting board. I was a dog chasing my tail in circles.

Moaning, pacing, I was two steps away from going all slasher and raking my talons through the canvas sides of our tent. Jazz's strong hand stayed me, his calmness tried to invade me, "Easy there, killer."

A turmoil of liquid gold, I turned my eyes to him, "Why can't I just keep my trap shut!"

Em took my state of despair as an invitation to fuck with me. Passing behind me, he knocked my feet out from beneath my legs so that I fell, spun, and landed on all fours. And before Bubba even had the chance to finish his insult, "Yeah, smooth move--" I brought him down beside me; his Paul Bunyan body crashing to the earth with a deafening sonic boom as he gasped out, "_Ex-Lax!_"

_Christ, did he never tire of the gastro-intestinal theme of his jokes?_

Smirky fuckhead just smirked at me, "No-o-," and I popped his jaw before he could pop that 'p'.

Well, at least Bella seemed to have supernatural on her side.

_~~ll~~_

Dawn lit up the emerald, olive, viridian, and lime surroundings in tones of jewel and drab. The incessant hum and buzz of night creatures, the cries and screams of nocturnal prowlers were replaced by birdsong and human calls.

Airboats amassed at different entry points along the bayou.

Taking the helm, Junior pushed a new Stetson back on his head and beckoned us in with an admonition, "Buckle up, y'all, 'cause it's gonna' get bumpy!"

A worthy seaman as much as a conquering cavalryman, Jazz took us out. The wind whipped up into a fury by the massive fan behind us, the noise was immense, the feeling completely liberating! Hovering over the churning water and spinning around at breakneck speeds, we spooked crocs, alligators, and water moccasins. Rare bromeliads and delicate orchids trembled in their sheltered homes.

Throttling down, we came upon Papa Swan. A loner, a solitary man. As he pulled back and prepared to release his arrow, I followed his sights to a bull alligator swishing his brawny tail like a rattler over sand, creating a serpentine pattern. I had to admire Charlie's stance, his accurate aim, his steadiness; he was born to bear a weapon.

Backing away slowly, silent as only we could be, we left Charlie to his hunt and split up for our own. Capable of perching over air just like our boat, I darted to deserted nether regions of the marsh.

I paused to sniff, taking stock. _Herbivore, herbivore, amphibian, CARNIVORE!_ I found him basking on a mud bar that had been bared by the ebb and flow of briny currents. Lazing amongst the cagey armature of mangrove roots that rose from the ground as flying buttresses, he was warming his cold blood. Poisonous snakes draped and looped over bows, slithering down on scales only to hiss and recoil. The gator paid no heed, confident that he was king of this piece of land.

Swimming up to him, I grabbed his supine tail in one rough fist and slung him into the water. I was spoiling for a fight and wanted him to come at me on his home turf.

His maw opened to reveal teeth the size of my fist. I licked along the barbs of my own teeth and smiled.

With alacrity, the alligator came at me, weaving in the water, sending out a tempo of waves. I laughed and dodged him. Crawled on top of him and hugged him to me. The ridges of his armor were ripples of pleasure against my skin. My arms stole around his belly and I rolled us, viciously, at an alarming rate that created a vortex around us!

And I swear a fucking heifer-like slick grey manatee flipped me off with its stunted slipper of a fin. Fat-ass fish-cow had better just be thankful that I was busy playing with my food!

Stunned, the giant reptile sank when I released it, and his slit eyes balled back into his head as I swam him to shore. Through tough scales and hide, my first touch caused the beast to jerk up. My second touch was with my incisors and sinking down through the inches of his breastplate, my mouth was like the prow of a ship smoothly cutting through whitecaps and water.

To his heart, slowing, slowing, I licked it within the cavity of his chest. Punctured it, used it as a vessel through which I drank every last drop of brackish copious blood.

Tossing the emptied carcass aside, I took his spot on the bank. Mud sucked me down into its cool malleable depths. Above me, heavy muggy air pressed me further.

Victorious.

Defeated.

Night fell swift and impenetrable to the feeble human eyes. Reconvening campside, I busied myself building up a fire, careful to keep my hands and other highly combustible body parts away from the gathering inferno.

_Boy Scout you are not. _Charlie was back, to the tune of Wild Turkey rotgut and Busch beer. "Breaking out the good stuff, eh there, Sheriff?" Em cozied up to him and momentarily took the heat off me.

Here in the back of beyond, the heathens were dancing in this hellish festering armpit, firelight was flickering and roasting, black smoke was curling with tendrils roiling.

Even with Carl yakking it up with Charlie as if they were destined to be future in-laws, Chuckles was all sharpish on my ass.

I sat as far away as was inhumanly possible.

Bubba and Jazz stood behind the tent, whispering like schoolgirls, discussing the merits of gator blood over raccoon fodder and comparing the size of their..._kills_.

Cold beer met the iron salty tangy entrails of alligator inside my stomach. An ulcer was burning within me. I needed Tums or Pepto Bismol or Pepcid to relieve the popping indigestion of wondering what the hell Bella was doing at this precise moment.

And I didn't want to know at all.

Feigning relaxation, I kicked my legs out and stretched my arms back behind my head, combing my fingers through my thick hair, brushing it down and then ruching it up.

That lasted for all of two seconds before my leg was bouncing with nerves and I started nibbling on my fingernails. Remembering my long obdurate fingers inside of Bella, the nail I was currently trying to bite off scraping and soothing her clit. And her fucking dad sat across from me. His ass plonked down in one of our lawn chairs, making hisself at home, the twin libations of bourbon and beer filling the armrests' cupholders. For the moment all he was thinking about was the gator he had taken down earlier and '_Now, Carl and Bubba I might could learn to stomach, but them other two still give me the skeevies'._

Turning up the dial on my Bella buggering reminiscence, my fingers had braided through hers as we thrust in and out of her snug hot spring, the whirlpool of muscles grabbing me tighter, and she had caressed the sensitive pad of my middle finger as we stroked around and around the eddy of her flesh. Holding my eyes with hers that oozed like an oil spill across tarmac, Bella's cheeks had turned the most unholy shade of pink, her juicy lips parted, the tip of her kitten tongue poked out and I leaned over to lick it while she came like a lava floe over the icecaps of my skin inside of her. Thawing me. From deep below her orgasm, Bella was soft rough, _"Eddie…pure fucking bliss."_

Trying to hide my ever-growing, never-ceasing boner from Chaz, I propped my elbows on my knees and inclined over my clasped hands. I could still feel the wet slough of her like sulfur, acidic, burning me. I wanted to suck my fingers now to see if any of her remained. Maybe like the etching of me fucking her with both our hands that was stuck in my brain, a taste of her cunt could be found tucked into the whorls of my fingers.

Gathering condensation like cum, I ran middle and index digits up and down the warming bottle of Pabst then passed the moisture across my lips.

Suddenly Charlie was giving me the stink eye. Jesus H. Christ! Could he fuckin' tell I was trying to recreate Bella's snatch sap? My head snapped to him as he thought, _Somethin's off with that boy._ And yet he lifted his drink towards me before he decided to fuck with me, "By the by, Ed-" –_ Oh hell no, that ain't gonna fly!_ -- "Bella distinctly told me _not_ to send her regards to you. But she says hi to the rest of y'all."

Smug motherwhoresucker!

I winced, blanched, and moved further away from the fire. It was beginning to make me a most unmanly shade of iridescence. Shimmer and sparkle replacing my carefully cultivated sweaty sheen.

Em came round to fetch another beer, cupped his hand over his mouth and nose and fake-snotted into his palm.

I was in utter hell. Watching Em crack open one of the Sheriff's Busches, pretty fuckin' sure I'd blown any chance with Bella out of the water by leaving with no word; the only bush I wanted to drink from was hers.

Feeling like a charred lump of coal without Bella, with her mean-spirited and totally deserved insult brought to me by daddy Swan, the ulcer in my belly was a conflagration of congealed blood and alcohol and a mixture of the rancid thought of Bella with Jacob.

Done-for, I turned in. The others shortly followed suit.

"Night, _Ed_," muffled laughter.

"Goodnight, dick-cheese-smegma-rot," a bark of amusement

"In the morning, teabaggin'-poontang-fucker," the sides of the tent rippled with howls of laughter!

The next morning as soon as the sun cleared the horizon, we had the Bronco packed, ready to head back early because I just couldn't stay away from Bella any longer.

Suckass Swan met us at the gate as we were signing out of the habitat, "I'm off home too. I need to check on Bella." _Fuck that, if anyone needs to check on Bella, it's me!_ "I'll just follow you boys back."

I groaned out loud! Now we were tied down to following the goddamned speed limit! Hastily I tried to salvage the situation, "We'll be going off the beaten track, sir."

No joy as Chuck parlayed, "Suits me, I'm a backwoods man myself." _Yeah, ain't you just! Cunt!_

It was sundown by the time we hit Charleston city limits and I was at my wit's end with worry and need and want.

Back home, Carl, Bubba, and Jazz all paired up with their women like horny pigs-in-a-blanket. Undigested clumps of that gator's cold blood hit the back of my throat like puke.

I threw their shit out of the truck and took off. Instead of falling back on my irritating tics, in lieu of pinching the bridge of my nose and scalping myself with hands that felt encrusted in dirt and blood that would not be scrubbed clean, I adjusted my hard-on and cruised along 17 North.

Just as my anxiety reached boiling point, I heard an almighty fart followed by, _"You smelt it, you dealt it!"_

Scrounging around the floorboard, I found the little widget that Bubba had deliberately left behind and, shouting, "FUCK YOU, Fart Boy," I hurled it so fuckin' far that it bounced and exploded against a semi half a mile in front of me.

Then, I smelled her.

* * *

A/N:

Each and every review brings me pure joy, and I hope I reflect it back to y'all with the way I am simply loving writing this fucked up fic. If you laughed, scowled, fell off you chair, or wanted to smack, or screw!, Eddie (or any of the Dead Fed boys), I'd love to hear from you.

Huge thanks for reviews, blogspots, PM's. Especially those that suggest nicknames, bumper stickers, church signage!

Y'all know where to find me by now.

The next _Rebelward Without a Cause_ outtake comes to you from my beautiful frol223. All about Jazz; it is sizzling!

I started writing a very short story called _Incarcerated_. It is all sorts of Southern dark sultriness and you can find it on my profile.

Recs, because I hope to bring your attention to lesser known amazingly well-written fics in sundry catergories, so take your pick and leave 'em love:

Her Royal Highness of poetic, erotic, heart aching slash C-Me-Smile's _Begin Again._

Sexiest fuckin' robfic: _The_ _Anonymous Series_, written by SinShameGuilt. Don't roll your eyes at me, this R'fic is W.O.W.

Just plain HOT: _Pretty Pieces of Flesh_, by luxurykill.

_La Petite Mort_ by the illustrious houroflead is beyond my darkest, most sensual imaginings

As always, tidbits for the chapter on my profile.


	9. Shake it Out

**Many huge thanks to my beta, V. Let me tell you, girl's got her hands full with me ;).**

**Disclaimer: Eddie, Jizz and Bubba in the lowcountry? Mine. Twilight, etc.? Defs SM's.**

**This one goes out with a big wet sloppy to my Nordic Mistress;), BSTjerne…**_**you've no idea how much I missed you. **_** And, **_**always,**_** to my Dead Fed ladies!**

* * *

**Shake it Out**

_Shake it out, shake it out  
God, I need another round  
Another round, another round  
Another, I could feel it now  
I felt the Lord in my father's house_

_Then I could see, I could see  
Standing, we were seventeen, make it clean  
Are you the living ghost of what I need?  
Are you giving me the best of me?  
We will see_

_'Cause I'm done being alone  
With the funerals at least for now  
Are you tired of being alone?  
Are you tired of being alone?_

_And I could see, I could see  
God, I've never seen a thing, so complete  
I am the living ghost of what you need  
I am everything eternally, God, just speak_

_'Cause I'm done being done  
With the funerals at least for now  
Are you tired of being alone?  
Are you tired of being alone?  
So speak to me_

_I felt the world begin to peel off all my skin  
And I felt the weight within  
Reveal the bigger mess that you can't fix_

_I felt, I felt God lead me into my home  
Don't stop, don't ever go  
I swear you'll never know, you'll never know_

_Oh God, you gotta shake it out, shake it out  
You gotta break it down, break it down_

_Shake it Out_, Manchester Orchestra

Fart boy was road-dust. Sniffing the air and zeroing in on Bella, I followed the fragrant trace that became more and more fertile the closer I got to her. _Freesia_. I'd stumbled across her scent in Esme's garden to find the flowers that smelled of Bella blooming like pastel chrysalis in one of her many casket-cum-flower pots. _Strawberries_. I could still see the pulpy juice slurping down Bella's pointy chin at the festival. It felt like a coon's age since I'd seen her, even longer since that day when I had first talked to her, and yet it was scant more than two weeks.

I parked the Bronco in the small cemetery at Christ Church to tread the path of her luxuriously earthy aroma on foot, trespassing hallowed ground again. I came to a dead fucking standstill when I found the origin of her bouquet. A flotilla of motorcycles rested in the parking lot; their owners washing back brews and smoking tab ends to the nub. Shooting the shit, the hubbub was deafening as I tried to pinpoint Bella.

Strolling by, a loose gait taking him past the massed rough riders, a Kashi-eating, dread-locked, peg-eared peace lover grinned slackly and flashed a 'V' at the leather-head tribe. They raised their fists in return and yelled out, "Walk on, brother!" Grunge boy nodded his head slowly and carried on by me as if I was nonexistent. Jutting out of the back of his rucksack was a regulation sized American flag and a handwritten sign placarded to his pack beseeching: _Nirvana or Bust?_

_Shee-it_, the louse-haired git was headed towards downtown. I could tell him straight up that he was headed in the wrong direction! At the rate he was going, he'd be more likely to come across Woodstock--that formerly hippy-filled field that seemingly no one could accurately locate anymore.

Sniggering and feeling pissy, I laughed outright when I came face-to-face with a crooked signpost standing against the entrance of the bar: _Hippies Use Side Door._ _Yeah, Pigpen, they're talkin' to you!_

Richard's Fuckin' Tavern. _Shit._ Worse yet? The Wolf Mobile was front and center.

Bella _plus_ her puppy dog _plus_ Richard's equaled trouble. Even Bubba could do that math!

A magnet for the lowcountry's fuckwits and weirdoes, this place was going to be the death of me if Bella herself was not. I stepped inside and was taken aback by the clatter, the reek, and the crowd.

Returning early from the Gator hunt, I had given up, caved, threw in the towel.

Eddie was a competitor of the finest nature. This was unheard of!

But fuck me, I had missed Bella.

Stupidly thinking I could erase her from my body and mind if I just put enough space between us…_nah_. Not gonna' happen and I knew it the first day. More irritable than a grizzly, not even the salty, frothy, spewing life-force blood gushing from the innumerable gators we hunted satisfied me.

Em thought it was all too fuckin' funny. Him and his accursed Fart Boy.

He called me Bella's Bitch.

And I was.

I almost turned tail a-fuckin'-gain in this hotbed of misfits. Truculently, I parked my ass at the bar and ordered a beer.

It was murky inside. All the colors, but for the neon Pabst, Schlitz, Bud, and Busch signs, had bled. I almost felt at home; estranged, a nobody.

Hicks, riders, country bumpkins. White, black, Creole. People, a swampy overheated room chock-a-block with blood-plump people, milled about.

This greasy spoon that advertised _Hot Food and Cold Beer_ stank of fried flipper and werewolf.

That right there just made me downright tetchy!

I hadn't caught sight of Bella yet and wasn't even sure I wanted her to see me. I looked around halfheartedly and chuckled when I came across Missus Snape. Paired up with a biker clad in the tanned and dyed skins of the mammals I ate every day; he was enraptured with her substantial tightly corseted grill, his thoughts were on endless loop, _Thanks be for tits!_ Snapestress was still wearing those weapon-like stiletto boots on this hot-as-fuck night.

Now petulant, I started scanning the melee more closely for Bella.

A rotund woman swiveled through the fracas, and I followed the motion of her hips until she halted in front of a waist that had been held in my hands. Harshly swallowing the huge gulp of Pabst I'd just guzzled, I raised my eyes up to a simple peony-pink t-shirt, over a neck that I had licked and nuzzled, onto blousy lips that were wide with a welcoming grin, a grin that was not aimed at me.

"MAMA BROWN!" Bella swayed slightly on her feet that, when I swooped to stare lower, were shoed in fawn suede heels that were the perfect plinth for her gorgeous toes and sexy ankles.

The big, beautiful, black woman that I should have recognized from all the time I'd spent loitering about her establishment pulled Bella into a squeezing hug and climed, "Hey L'il Momma, what you doin' here?"

A scowl replaced the smile on Bella's mouth as she muttered, "Just trying to forget a man, Mama. Know what I mean?"

Mama's Geechee guttural voice growled back, "_Mmm hmm, _Sho' 'nuff, sister. It ain't nuthin' but a shame, Miss Bella. But you go and put your brave face on. Don't let no man get you down, sugah," stepping back and placing her soft knowledgeable hands on Bella's shoulders, she shook her head and continued, "L'il Momma, you are a damn fine woman!"

Pouty, I was growing increasingly pissed off.

_Very_ fucking pissed off when Mama took her leave and Bella went back to her dance…_with goldarned gumbo boy_! Tossing her hair back so that it whipped the onlookers, Bella grooved and grinded with not one single misplaced foot or swirl or shake of her head!

_Ah fuck._ The woman knew how to rip a rug. Feeling the rhythm as it took hold of her movements, she gave a whole new meaning to the Ducks Unlimited motto _Shake Your Tailfeathers_!

I watched, famished for the sight of Bella, as her jeans slipped lower over the top slope of her ass with her sinuous movements.

She sensed me. She noted my arrival. She looked at me with all the hate she could muster and I deserved it. Glaring at me, she turned it _down_, and brought it _on_. Bella looked all biting at the bit and pissed off and destined to make a fool of me tonight!

My lust, as ever, and my irascibility knew no bounds.

In the background--_while she milled those lithe hips and that sweetheart ass against Jake, and I desired nothing more than to rip their two bodies apart_--pool balls banked and banged on the emerald green felt and veered off of one another. I _needed_ Bella to career away from the bayou beastie's body. Right. Fucking. Now!

Skulking across the pastiche, pasted with sticky slop dance floor, I avoided the gruesome duo and sat in a back booth to get a better perspective. To flagellate myself just a wee bit more. Observing and willing my hands to not strangle the young furbag that had his _own_ fucking mammoth hands all over Bella.

The sensuous way Bella dipped low and swiveled back up, brushing that curvaceous ass all along the mongrel's lower body until his half-mast eyes rolled around in his head like the question marks on a dimestore Magic 8 Ball, she was the epitome of all that was erogenous.

Full-force and gratuitously groping against Jacob, dancing furiously and all the while turning up the heat and furor in me, Bella unleashed her fury. I was enflamed as she thrust against her colossal toy-boy. _I'd sure as hell show her a real man! _Or a vampire at least!

Jaded.

_Oh hell. _I was so very lost.

Misplaced in a mental mélange of feeling. _Good fucking God_! How could _I_ feel? I didn't even possess that seat of all human emotion...there was no heart beating within me!

Attempting detachment, I released my straining, tight-wire muscles and lounged back into the skanky surface of the booth, all mucky with spillage from these distasteful, ungraceful, undignified humans.

Glowering, glancing, displeased and moping, reveling in my own stupid anger-lonesomeness-sadness, I nursed a cold one. The frosty glass pulled from the ancient ice-chest was not as cold as my soul. Nor my body.

I was wishing Bella would nurse, or at the very least suck-off, _my_ cold one!

Fiddles played, and I thought of my bursting fiddlehead. _Bella's nipples were like cracking caramel coated fiddle faddle, and I'd never even tasted the shit!_ And fellatio, days of blow jobs was what I needed!

The most fucking abhorrent thing of all was that I didn't even want anyone else! I knew that not even doing a Heathcliff with a nameless bitch was going to right this fucked up situation. I'd never fucking _ever_ given a second thought to cocking off before and then going all Rhett when the whiney manky morning breath whores had started in with their inevitable, "When are you gonna' call me, Eddie?" Always, _always, _I'd been able to fuck and then sneer and think _Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn…about you Now get the fuck out of my trailer._

Now I was pondering way too fucking much and hurting for it all.

Right now, in Richard's, case in point. Women approached, waited, whiled and worried and wept away while I sat stiff and unmoving, entranced and infuriated. Messica Stanley and her sidekick Boring Lauren simpered up, chompin' Bubblicious like two cows chawin' cud and flapping their pink gums at me.

I simply waved them away.

Bitches were polluting my vision.

I pursed my full lips, jutted them just like a toddler in a time-out.

Watching, waiting, repulsed by it all. Loathing myself for what I wanted. Disgusted at Bella for what she _made me want_. Above it all, craving to rip that scalawag's wagging cock-blocker of a dick-tail from his groin and shove it up into his snout! All I heard from Bella was…_nothing_. Hushed silence. That would have been welcome were I not so petrified with fear over the thoughts I could almost see racing across her face.

All I smelled through the smoke of umpteen blazing unfiltered Camels, the PBR beer breath and sweat and Jack spiked Cokes, the creek-fresh fried shrimp was _her._

Dancing. Freed. Limitless. Heavenly perfumed and pungent and poignant and fucking _all mortal_!

Maddening me with every sinking of her hips timed so lithely to the music.

_This_ was what I found when I returned from my self-enforced exile from Bella.

Full-on emotional whiplash found me hunkering back into the booth and closing my eyes. I didn't even need to, _could not even_, sleep and I was fucking knackered!

Busted up.

When I looked up again, I cranked the lid of the table off its legs with the image before me. _Oh hell no!_ There was a scrot-crotch redneck leering at Bella over his longneck! An alcohol-ridden, yellow-eyed, liver-putrefying geezer checking out her bumper and the motherfucker had better keep his hands off or I was going to make a goddamn deadneck out of him! I'd had just about enough of this shit.

By the looks of it, so had Bella. She flipped the bird to the crusty VD-riddled diehard, shook her hair out and glared at Jacob, silently entreating him to back the fuck off her ride, before she stalked to me.

_Christ, here we go. _

"What the hell are you doing here, Eddie?" Bella near but spit in my face that was four inches higher than hers, but a helluva lot closer with those fuck-me heels on her feet.

I tried for a charming half-smile as I backed up from her tirade, "Bella, I like to get me some quality face time," and my wink fell flat when she paced to me, grasped my flannel and pushed me out the saloon's doors, muttering, "I think we need to take this outside."

Shaking with vehemence, Bella fractured me with her fierce near-night eyes.

Incremental drops of wet fell upon us. A midnight shower, brought on from the mugginess of the day. Heavy weather blanketed Bella and I as we stood off in the car park.

A fat drop of rain hit the upmost hill of her breast that beat like hammers with her heartbeat. It wept down her cleavage and wet the front of her shirt. Another plonked against her scapula. Spattering out from that hard bone and running in an undiluted line down the ligature, the languor, of her spine.

I bit my upper lip as I watched the trail that the plastering quickening rain took over her body, wanting to sink my teeth into her béchamel flesh.

The nectar of her furiously pursed mouth had me hanging closer, close enough, _delirious_ enough, that I didn't foresee the flat-handed smack she laid across my cheek!

Gusts of breath chopped out of her, raised her tits, tilted her spine, shook her legs and she held herself up on the dipped saddle of someone's sucky Kawasaki shored up on the pavement behind her.

While I was adjusting to the glorious enraged sight of her, becoming aware of the humid delta between her thighs that was hot with ire and need, Bella slapped me again, a mere tickling strike, on the opposite side of my face.

Full up on fight and not a little bit trashed, Bella brought that fucking suck-me glorious mouth within centimeters of mine before she gnashed out, "Listen here, Eddie. Unless you came to apologize to me, or fuck me, I don't want to hear it! So you can save your breath, _boy-_" – _shit, was she taking lessons from Papa Swan or what? - _, "If you even need to breathe, that is."

I should have focused on her words, but her iPod was shoved in her back pocket and those pink earbuds were dangling over her nipples and the miniature little fucker was turned on and I could hear the liquid strains of _Where Have All the Cowboys Gone._

I shouldn't be thinking she was cute when she was about ready to kill me, but I couldn't help it! Bella had just hit me twice, obviously hated me, _needed_ me just as I could not do without her, and I felt giddy. As the chorus traipsed around again, I lifted the bud from her breast, brushing the hard and hot tip under her rain-soaked shirt. Unable to resist, I placed the little speaker in her ear, fingered her lobe and took one gorgeous tit in my hand, warming the nipple with my palm so that it was engorged with sex instead of wet cold.

_Where have all the cowboys gone…_

I whispered in her free ear, plucking her nipple into a hill that I wanted inside of my mouth, "Right here, darling.'"

For one moment, Bella was emollient, soothing and caressed and careless. Reason found her quickly and she smarted my chest with her fists, brushes of pleasurable feathers only.

She would never be able to hit me hard enough.

But I was already stinging. Trite when I should have been contrite.

Seeking to hurt me physically, she had to know that I was already, _fucking always, _pained by this thing between us!

And it just didn't matter, because I was an asshole.

Bella hissed as she threw her clenched hand into my stomach, her lunge little more than a nurturing touch on my belly, "You FUCK! I thought I'd never see you again!"

I stepped back. She pursued. I was a cad, a heel, a dickhead.

She spat at me, "I had to hear from _Charlie_ that you were having a good old time in the Glades?"

Silent, I was as gormless as that clod Jacob she'd left inside. A flurry of malevolence, Bella spellbound me with her moxie.

Scoffing, stomping the heel of her shoe into the top of my shitters, Bella bit out, "You _bastard._" Spinning around, her shoulders hunched and her hands rose to her face and I swear to fuck that if I had made her cry I would take myself straight to the Volturi in offering!

"Bella. _Bella!_ Please don't," my hand limped and wasted away, inches from her broken back.

A sob rolled up through her spine before she quelled it, so much more singular, insulated, stronger than anyone I had ever met, her tear-swollen voice fed the air, "I just needed to see you."

_And so I needed to see you, Bella._

"I can't…_I don't know, Bella!" _I called her back around to me, but had not escaped the landslide of her indignation.

"Eat me, Eddie," Bella sneered with her straight little nose pulled up and her blackening eyes sharpening on the cock-hard shape in my jeans. Her words were not an invitation, but an insult.

The savage senses that slumbered within me ate through human impulses, and when I checked Bella's expression again, my look must have been devilish, "I reckon I might could do just that, Bella."

"Fuck you!" She screamed at me in such a high pitch that I feared for the skuzzy windows of Richard's that threatened to shatter. "I don't even know how you found me here, you and your fucking ESPionage. I don't care how beautiful you are with your delicious smirks," Bella's eyes narrowed to nothing as she raked over my stunned form. "You and your tasty mouth," she looked like she wanted to punch it much more than kiss it, "Your perfect specimen of a body, your headfull of messy copper penny hair." I was hoping that her inspection would warm her to what she was describing, me in the beautiful skin that felt like all I had to offer, but she continued her assault as she shoved, futilely, against my shoulder. I stumbled back nonetheless with her next attack, "Newton's probably more of a man than you are!"

Shaken, gawping! I had known this confrontation was going to be an abominable homecoming, but to compare me to Eye of Newt and have him come out on top was fucking beyond the pale!

A tough gurgle of laughter curled Bella's lips that had never looked more wrong, "Shut your mouth, honey. That's a good way to catch flies."

The shards of my voice were nothing like velvet, nothing captivating, only pure aversion and leaking spleen, "Bella, I-"

Not done yet, _no_, not by a long shot, Bella advanced with her straight finger pointing into my chest and I kept stepping back so as not to break that digit with my obdurate torso, "How old are you anyway, Eddie?"

_What the fuck?_ "What?" Confusion and despair scrunched my forehead, my mouth puckered around the question.

"Huh, you hard of hearing now as well as hard-headed and black hearted? I said: How. Old. Are. You!"

"Eighteen, Bella. Eighteen," _or thereabouts_, I muttered under my breath. _And old enough to know better, older than you, old enough to be your great great fucking great grandpappy – fuck, that's a disgusting thought! Old enough to put you over my knee – much better, I was definitely going to revisit that idea at a later date!_

Ballsy, bitchy, Bella broke it down for me, pushing me ever closer to the verge of 17 North, the road busy with cars whistling past. "I am _not_ interested in playing games. And I am fucking sick to death" —_that makes two of us, Bella--_ "of your lies. So, Eddie, when you're ready to man up you could give me a call. I might answer."

My eyes were shining like the orange flames of a gas lantern.

Grow up? She wanted me to grow up? I'd seen more of life than I'd ever wanted to. Had matured into a fully formed vampire in the space of three awful arduous days. I'd lost my mother, my father, and had been murdered only to rise again as a monster to spend nearly a century alone and miserable. And _this_ right here? This _life_ in South Carolina had been my boyhood, until I met her. I didn't even know if I wanted to _man up_.

I was so blindsided by her insight that when her next heave came, I was off-kilter. Falling back from my ill-placed feet, my arms windmilled out behind me as I dipped into the whining mash of traffic, feeling the quick tornado of speed and a sideview mirror that sheared off against my head.

Instinct overtook ruse and in less space than it took to even think, I clutched Bella and flew us in a flash of light to the dank side of Richard's! Pushing her shoulders back against the wall to hold her still as some other new fight pervaded her features, I stilled motion. And closed my eyes that fired bright ashes.

Gasping, her sweet whiskey breath dampening my chin, weakly struggling, completely colorless and wild, Bella keened out, "That, THAT! is what I'm talking about! Dammit!" Her head beat back before I cushioned the blows with my hand, cupping her skull, fingers filled with her moistened seaweed tresses.

"Bella," the chilling fan of my breath licked her sweaty forehead and frosted over her widow's peak, "I'm sor-"

"Save it, Eddie! You don't owe me an apology this time," She laughed a thing that was tinged with the tiniest bit of hysteria as she shook her head and made me release her with eyes that begged distance. "In fact, you've made it quite clear that you don't owe me anything."

Stumbling away, Bella glanced down at her shoes and lifted her left foot. The heel she'd stabbed into my boot earlier was dangling. With a thorough crack, she tore it off, "Just fucking perfect." She flicked the sharp piece into the air and sniggered when it landed back out in the middle of the road, trampled just like Fart Boy beneath tire after tire.

The tavern door burst open, slopping out fresh scents of stale beer, fish-fry, perspiration.

Mama voluptuously rolled out.

She took in shrewd eyefuls and clucked her tongue, shook her majestic head, "_Mmm mmm mmm._ Hey there, l'il momma, you need a lift home?"

I hoped Bella would say no. I expected her to keep her eyes downcast.

Instead she looked right through me and acquiesced, "Yes, Mama, yes I believe I do."

"'S'what I thought," Mama said as she speared me and I could hear her thoughts: _No 'count boy. Does my l'il momma know what y'are yet?_

Ambling to Bella, pulling her into the corpulent bowl of her hips, Mama led Bella towards her pick-up.

She gunned it out of the parking lot and the truck backfired as if shitting on me one more time. The last thing I saw was her license plate that read_ SFNYOMF._

I felt stupid for wanting to wave her off. I lumbered to the Bronco, put her in gear, and made for the double wide. About halfway to Cainwhore, I heard it. _QUACK! Ew, did somebody step on a duck?_

No, Fart Boy, no. But Bella just stepped across my grave, and tossed another clod of dirt onto my already creaking coffin.

Em had stocked up, of fuckin' course. I was going to break his fool neck.

* * *

**~~So, did ya' miss Eddie?~~**

**More Dead Confederates will be coming faster, hotter, and funnier.**

**Who knows what Mama's license plate reads, huh?**

**Review Please! Any little part you want, but if you need a starting point…**_**How 'bout that Bella? **_**Got a church sign, bumper sticker, t-shirt, billboard that screams Dead Confeds? Let me know.**

**Dead Confederates is up for some awards at The Faithful Shipper (Comeuppance is up for one as well)! 2nd Round Voting is in progress and ends September 30th: **

**Thefaithfulshipperawards(DOT)webs(DOT)com(SLASH)round2voting(DOT)htm**

**Right now I am writing two other things:**

_**Incarcerated**_** is my very angsty, sensual E/J slash. It is dark and delicious and full of their histories in such a way as has never been written before. If you read slash, this one will surprise and excite you. It's AU and again set in the South, but not all like our DC's. A short story, I am 1-2 chapters away from completing it. But never say never as there may be a sequel.**

_**Portentous Prompted Tales**_** is comprised of my entries for the Twilight Twenty-Five competition, hosted by the very fucking awesome queenofgrey. These stories are all oneshots or drabbles based on 25 prompts and I have to finish them by Dec. 1****st****. **_**Ha fucking ha ha!**_** So alert me to catch those too. I'll be doing mine all AU and male POV (because I need more of a challenge….NOT). And will be written in many different genres: dark, sweet, crack, poignant, erotic, humor. My first, **_**Raindrops**_**, is posted and is about Peter's backstory and his meeting Charlotte. My next three are done and just need posting, so stay tuned.**

**~~You can hang with me and the boys (and their biggest fans) in the Double Wide on the AU Twilighted Forums, if'n you want. Ta, Rie~~**


	10. Castle Keepers

**Untold thanks to the best-ass beta around, V!**

**Disclaimer: The boys are mine. Twilight is SM's**

**This is for Liz.**

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**Castle Keepers**

I choked down and backed up next to Bubba's monster truck, like ducks in a row.

I was so jacked up, I was about ready to explode!

Foregoing the steps that were now nearing moldy rubble, I jumped across the threshold, the screen door swinging by one loose pivot. Bubba was at the kitchen table, his black hair shining like a filthy beacon beneath the bare kitchen bulb. Nonchalantly looking up from his never-ending game of Solitaire, he smirked, "What's up, geezer?"

I was at his throat before he could turn the next card, knocking the ladder-backed chair to the lino and scuffling with him across the floor. Em fucking laughed out, "Uh oh, not good times at the honky tonk, huh?"

The Queen of Spades flipped up and dove back down to us. Attempting to wound with a paper cut at least, she crumpled upon meeting Em's dense neck.

"You fuckin' shit, I'm gonna' drop-kick you into next week!" I thrust my knee into his groin and he just chuckled harder, "Oh, that's gonna' leave a bruise, bro!"

Lifting Em up with one hand that barely felt his solid weight, I tightened my clasp around his windpipe and heard the pleasant suffocating whistle of his breath until he quit breathing altogether. Punching the side of his head, I mashed him further into the wall, creating a nice big Bubba shape in the plaster, "Sit 'n' Spin, ass maggot."

Bubba used the last of his precious unneeded air to whisper out with a smile, "Oooh, how'd you know that's my favorite position? You been having girlie chats with Rose? Oh, that's right, my bad…_mind reader._ Nice one, Eddie."

Just then he flashed his latest fuck with Rose into my head and I staggered back, assaulted by their sex, releasing him so that he found his feet with a soft pounce.

"So, how you likin' my new t-shirt, Eds?" I groaned and looked up to Bubba who was pulling out the hem of his shirt that read _Save a tractor, ride a redneck_, completely fucking unaffected by the fact that I wanted to kill him, or something, or _anybody._

I stomped out of the DW; it was useless trying to fight with a full-grown child.

Junior was strolling around the front yard, toothpick ground to dust between his teeth, staring at the stars and muttering to himself. Clearing my throat of the last vestiges of wrath, making sure I didn't startle Jazz as he was still sometimes skittish with his brutal history, I called his attention to me.

"Hey, look there," Jazz pointed to the heavens where a flash of silver and twinkles trailed and heaved across sky and the eaves of the clouds. The smile on his mouth seemed to engulf the rarity of this occasion, although we'd seen copious comets before.

"Know what that is?" he whispered as if his pebbly voice would shake down the dome of the sky. I shook my head. "That, my friend, is no mere astronomical vaporization." His smile grew out into a wide laughing grin, "That right there? That's human shit! The waste from the space shuttle released into orbit! My man Brian Williams was talking about it tonight on the news and I just had to come out for a look-see at the crap-comet. _Fascinating_."

Would wonders never cease?

"Yo, Bubba!" I bellowed out, "Get your cottage cheese balls out here and get a load of this!"

His mind a delighted thing, thinking that there was either snatch, beer, or blood awaitin' on him, Bubba raced out of the trailer only to pull up short when he saw us star-gazing.

"What the shit? I was watching WWF Smackdown on Pay Per View, you pansies!"

"No, Em, I don't think you understand. That thing up there? Sparkly, frozen, reflecting, human shit discharged into space by the astronauts!" I held my sides that were as close to aching from laughter as was possible.

"Well, stroke my cock and call it an assteroid! Who knew that deep-space-dung could be so spectacular?"

We watched the poop trace its odd and beautiful Pleiades pattern for near an hour before I broke the amicable silence, "Let's grab a drink."

Jazz agreed, "Excrement idea, Eddie."

Back inside, all the lights on, Bubba looked like a friggin' fag with his Raybans on but he just shrugged his shoulders and mumbled, "Damn, that shit was bright-ass." Strutting to the Frigidaire, full up on thoughts of naked Rose, he opened the door and grabbed a plasma-pack. "Last one, losers!"

_Jesus fucking Christ, now on top of this whole shitty night I have to go out and hunt._

"Aw, whatsa' matter, Eddie? You want this," Bubba shook the thick plastic wrapped slush in my face, "_Mmmm_, sure smells good!" He brought it to my nose and then whipped it back with a, "Psyche!" when I lunged at it with my bared teeth.

_Such a cunt._

Laughing like a gibbon at his own apery, Bubba stuck his car key into the wrapping and pounded the contents in one long pull, shotgunning it like a beer to a frat boy.

When he finished, backhanding his mouth with his meaty fist, Em was thinking, _You smell like a pansy, dude. Been hangin' out with your LTC too much and not even getting' any. Fuckin' fruitcake._

I lifted my fist and battered the top of his skull so hard that he flattened to the floor, spitting out, "I'm gonna; fuckin' hand-feed you your own rocky mountain oysters, Bubba."

Nonplussed, Em sat up and shook his head to clear his vision, "Don't be such a poofter, Eddie. Tell me what you really think." Then he fake-coughed into the palm of his hand, '_light in the loafers'._

Jazz decided to intervene from his place, bracing up the falling-to-bits entryway, "Eddie, all this angst that you're holding in really isn't healthy."

Looking at him with widened, perplexed eyes, my mouth twitching into a scowl, I answered, "Jesus _Fuck_! You're almost as bad as cuntnugget there with his Fart Boys!"

"C'mon, you know this is about Bella and not Fart Boy, because he's fucking cool man! And I know he's growing on you."

"What? The fuck he is, Em."

"Oh yeah, then why can I still hear him flatulating in the Bronco instead of being plastered to the tarmac on 41?"

"Suck my dick, tallywhacker," I hurled as I charged out of the trailer, _a-fuckin'-gain._

"Yeah! Then at least you'd be getting some!" was Bubba's parting shot as I took to the musky scent of a group of deer.

_~~ll~~_

The next morning, I felt slightly less pissed off at Bubba, ten thousand times more disgruntled with myself, and completely discombobulated and disconsolate over Bella.

Having spent the night feeding from bucks and does and twisting in my own thoughts, I wanted to forget for just one moment all the ways I had messed up my chances with Bella. So I was doing what any good vampire would do: watching the local news on the old RCA from the porch couch while I paid the bills. Electrics first before the lights got cut off; Em had misplaced the three final notices. And there would be no such thing as direct debit for us, _no no no._ Too easy to trace and hack as, no doubt, Bubba's foolhardy password would inevitably be something lame like VAMPBOY09.

Even at this ungodly hour of the morning it was five hundred kinds of hot, and the heft of the air felt divine on my skin, sweaty sheen already in place.

Em loped up with his face painted red, sporting his Gamecocks jersey, a cold case of cheap beer resting atop each shoulder, ready to tailgate in our own back yard for the pre-season USC vs. Clemson football game. The rivalry between the Gamecocks and the Tigers was a thing of insanity and beauty. And it wasn't as if Em really rooted for USC over Clemson, it was just that he got a good snort out of the word 'cock' in any context. Sinking down beside me, he cracked a brewskie and started jittering his leg while he tossed me a cold one. We clinked our cans to Bubba's, "Breakfast of champions, braw."

It wasn't long before his fiddling got out of hand, about shaking us through the boards, and he tried to snatch the remote from where I had it squirreled away in the back pocket of my Strauss.

Placing the Bic in my mouth, I slapped his hands away, "Stop your fidgeting and sit fuckin' still, you're messing up my penmanship! You've got O-8 hours until kickoff, so chill out. I'm watching the news, rug-munch. You should too, you might actually learn something!"

"Bah! The only thing I'm interested in learning is who Guvna' Suck-my-dick Sanford is sticking it to these days, and if his missus is still up for grabs."

I had to laugh and high-five him, as I'd had that exact same thought many a time.

Then I shushed him at the latest story describing a town-hall meeting in rural Simpsonville. The anchorman tried to hide his own amusement as he reported, "A man stood up and told Representative Robert Inglis, Republican, to 'Keep your government hands off my _Medicare._'"

Bubba rolled off the couch and I doubled over while I gasped out, "Fucking Classic! Y'all! How can your fucking shit shine in Heaven and yet you can't grasp the fact that Medicare _is a government program!_"

Having swallowed the last of his mirth with the final drops of his Schlitz, Em relented, "Alright, this ain't so bad after all."

Three beers later, bills paid and placed in the mailbox, we were all rapt attention at the weather report. The weatherman stood in front of his giant map telling of sudden downpours to the northwest of us. Halting for a moment, he squinted at the monitor, squirmed, cracked a smile, barked a laugh and continued, "So, there was just a flash flood at-" and he turned to inspect the map where we could clearly see the name of the town he was trying to make out, "What does that say?" He stepped closer to the image, smirked and chortled, "A recent flash flood in _Cat Hole._" Mr. Bill Walsh couldn't contain his chuckle as he said, "Yeah, folks, Cat Hole. Imagine living someplace called that!" And I could hear his ratings skyrocket.

_Indeed._

Em gurgled out a frothy stream of piss-warm beer, "Dude said cat hole!"

I pounded his back as he choked on the swill, "Shut it, before I shove this pen up your bung hole, mate." But I was laughing too, and relaxed.

Until I caught sound of the foreign luxurious purr of Esme's pearl-white, vintage '72 Mercedes 350sl Roadster coming up the bend. With the top down, she was almost as shiny as the shit-comet from last night. Assuming the posture of one about to get reamed a new one, I slunk back into the sofa and hung my head meekly, quite fucking certain that she'd heard all about the Bella fiasco already.

Disregarding tradition, M'Esme didn't back in but sidled the sleek auto right up to the leaning porch. Leaving it to idle, she elegantly unfolded herself from the low slung convertible, looking like a starlet with her giant sunglasses, a silk Hermes scarf snug about her hair, her hands encased in long, supple, leather driving gloves. Popping the trunk, Esme hauled out totes full of…_cleaning supplies?_ _What the fuck?_ I knew I'd irrevocably messed up, but did she have to go all The Wolf from Pulp Fiction on my sad ass? _Shit!_ Maw was going to dust me and then destroy all the evidence of my existence with gallons of bleach and Saran Wrap?

This was worse than I thought.

Esme looked haughtily up at me and I shook as the earth iced over, "Boy," she gestured to me with a glare I could feel even through the dark tint of her glasses, "Take these things inside."

Tossing her keys to Bubba like he was a valet, she ordered him, "Get a scratch on her and I'll make you personal friends with Mr. Clean here."

"_Yessir_, m'am," Em pronounced, clicking his heels and performing a sweeping bow.

"Don't get cute with me, Bubba. Just park it."

Inside, she unraveled her caramel locks, took a clean cloth from her bag and wiped it across the coffee table, giving the obviously offensive piece of furniture a disdainful look, before she curtly folded her kerchief and placed it, along with her shades, down.

Lifting her specs that were hanging from a lustrous platinum coil around her neck to the arch of her nose, Esme turned one full circle to take in the pigsty surrounding her.

With an eyebrow raised, she asked, "Is Alice here yet?"

I wretched as if on a furball and grommeted out, "No. Why the F-…_why the devil_, would Mad Lady Muck be here?"

Ignoring me completely, she walked around the room, stepping over empties, dirties, and a miasma of squalor that Bubba and I liked to call home.

"This is most unacceptable, seeing as this was Alice's idea. Where is that girl? Doesn't she know that punctuality _and_ cleanliness are next to godliness?" Esme frowned and threw her gaze into the paltry woods that surrounded our junked-out abode, searching for the small shyster seraph.

Having returned from his parking duties, Bubba looked to me and silently mouthed, "_Psycho!" _

A giggle of hilarity almost escaped me. That would not bode well. Thankfully Bubba decided to get to the bottom of things, "So, yeah, Maw…what're you doin' here?"

"Boys, I don't need to tell you that you're living in a filthy fucking hovel," Bubba keeled over and I gasped at her unheard-of cussing! Esme smirked contemptuously at us, "_Our_ Alice thought it would behoove y'all to get this place straightened up. In preparation for Bella's visit."

She was smug as all get-out while I clung to those final words and stuttered like a chimpanzee, "What? Bel…huh?" I shook my head to clear the fog of anticipation that was settling in, "No. She won't come here to see me."

"Clearly not, _Edward_, if you don't pull your finger out and man the hell up!" _What the shit! _That was the second time in the space of twelve hours that I'd been told to grow up.

"Anyway, this shack you call a home is in need of a spring cleaning. When Alice called me with her suggestion, I could think of no better way to start getting you shipshape." For just one moment, Esme softened, her hand quavered a bit as she reached up to caress my cheek, looking to all intents like my mother, "You are better than this, Eddie. And you do deserve Bella."

_Ah fuck._ I held Esme's palm to my face and leant into the spotless smell of her, relishing the maternal touch. Longing for it to be Bella's.

That touching interlude didn't last long because the queer perfume of clover and fallen leaves heralded the smidget's arrival, rousing me from the insane burst of humanity that had clouded me with Esme's tender touch.

Her crow's nest hair glinted in the morning shine even through the filth caking the windows. Before she could open her felonious mouth, I quipped, "Why're you late, sister? Gates of hell get stuck this morning, did they?"

And Esme was back in true form; the softened hand that had held my face turned into a bludgeon against my ear, "Quit it, or I'll knock your block off!"

Rubbing her hands together, making me fear that she would create enough friction to start a small blaze, Alice looked almost gleeful for a change, "Let's get started on this shithole, shall we?"

And what the hell was that? Maw didn't even blink when _she_ cussed? I _almost_ stomped my foot. I definitely pouted.

Unloading bleach, disinfectant, rubber gloves, sponges, aerosol cans of who-the-fuck-knew-what, and cases of paper goods from Costco, the purgatory pair swooped like vampires high on whip-its; crazed housekeepers on hire from Castle Keepers, that local maven of maids who 'provided cleaning and so much more'. _Yeah, probably a rotting case of scabies._

Strolling up, looking like the cat that had eaten the canary, or more likely, had just feasted in his five-fingered-discounting dryad, Junior chuckled at the spate of activity while Bubba and I stood stock-still and dumfounded.

Fastidiously scouring every damn surface, inspecting grout, filling bin-liners with refuse, Esme and Alice worked speedily. Their female chattery was even more rapid. I couldn't half keep up with what they were saying. And _that_ was saying a lot!

Meanwhile, the boys and I unrooted ourselves and shoveled out the shit-heap of the porch. We cleaned out the brazier and restocked it, all the while joking about brassieres. Turning to the icechest, we filled it with brand-spanking-new cubes from the petrol station down the road and turned our comments to other _more interesting _chests.

Inside, the carpet had been cleaned, the drapes raped of their holdings of dust, every surface flickered, and hell if even the old rotary landline in the kitchen had not met its match with Esme and her dustcloth!

Only when Maw threatened to take the porch lounger to the dump did my hackles raise, _them are fightin' words!_ All three of us formed a formidable line in front of our comfortable friend, shaking our heads and warding the scant scullery maids off.

"C'mon! Esme, _please_, not the porch couch!" I begged, Bubba made as if to charm with his boyish dimples, Jazz licked his bottom lip before he bit it and propulsed a giant cloud of lust to his malevolent Mystic Meg.

Lowering my eyes, smiling and hoping to look cute, I pleaded, "A man's home is his castle. Please, Esme, just let us keep this."

Jazz chimed in, "No man is an island, Eddie."

_What the fuck does that mean?_ Of course I ain't nuthin' as pussy as an island! I'm more like the vast sweeping tundra of Siberia. I am no man's land and I ain't even a man!

_The Philosophical philanderer._

Shaking her fist in my face, Esme leant up to me, "You listen to me good, son. You make it right with Bella and I will let you keep this rotten heap of shit. You fuck up again? I will not tarry in taking both of y'all to the trash heap." She retreated inside, mumbling something incoherent about _knuckle sandwich…thick skull…_

"Nice save, bro," Em exhaled a thick belch that coupled as a sigh of relief.

Needing to make sure the two cavalier cleaners didn't toss out any more good shit, we followed them inside. Maw was blasting the fake skirting board with Raid, while the klepto crone shuftied around the living room sofa, tucking her hands in between the ass-crack of the cushions and quietly muttering, "Mine!" as she pocketed lost coins from the filthy, flinty innards.

Thinking it was now safe to retreat, Bubba mimed to me and Jazz, nodding his head and indicating that we were to adjourn outside.

We made a ragtag crew as we snuck out on tiptoes, bypassing the old grunt of the decomposing boards of the porch. Between us three we carried the RCA, fifteen feet of orange heavy-duty extension cord, and a cooler of beer, intent on setting ourselves up for an afternoon of tailgating. Distributing our goods between us, it wasn't that any one of us couldn't have lugged the whole load alone, but it was just bulky and awkward.

Jazz forgot to cushion the slap of the screen door and Esme was in our faces instantaneously, "Not so fast! Y'all have some DIY to attend to."

"Do it yourself? That's Eddie's expertise, Maw," Bubba tried to slink off but was brought up short by her fist at his collar. Hauling him to the kitchen, she all but squawked, "Why is there a plaster cast of your ass in this here wall?"

"Fix. It. Now."

Jazz and I tore up the beaten base of the porch, replaced the timber of the steps, installed the screen door that had sat underneath a tarp in the lean-to for two years.

Joining us outside, Alice strutted about, inspecting our handiwork and sipping a glass of room-temperate blood through a straw as if it was nothing more than a Cherry Coke.

I suddenly didn't care that Jazz was right beside me, pounding nails into wood with the flat of his palm instead of a hammer. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "What the fuck was up with that _Cullen-Swan-Volturi_ prophecy, Alice? Why do you keep goading me with Bella and taunting her about me?"

Fresh, vibrant rage rattled me out of nowhere until Junior circled my wrist and pushed a tiny taste of peace over me as I dry-heaved venomous thoughts.

"Eddie, no need to be so gauche. I can't tell you about the vision I had in the jail. These things come to me in spurts. All you need to know right now is that you and Bella are intrinsically linked, and it doesn't seem to matter how much of an asshole you are," she paused to smile a sick angelic thing at me, "Although, you might try to work on your manners."

All I heard was _yadda yadda yadda, yip yip yip._ Even through Jazz's emotional mind-meld, I was pissed, "Hey, don't like my manners, _shoes on and shit off!_"

Out of nowhere, Esme had her hand to the nape of my neck and welted into my ear, "That's not the way I raised you, Eddie. You are this close to getting paddled if you don't apologize. Right now."

All but scalping me, Esme forced me forward, still on my knees, "I do apologize for insulting your ladylike sensitivities." I grinned as Esme held harder, "Please forgive me," _wee wicked wrongdoer._

Freed from Maw's ripping hold, I sank back onto my heels and beat out, "Okay. Okay! But what's the fucking point of all this?" I waved my hand around, "She's not going to come."

Alice tapped her neurotic nuthouse noggin and wore a real smile, "She'll come."

A quick fastening of light arms raced around my neck and I was pulled back into Esme's embrace, this thing was of love, not the motherload of might she'd just laid on me. Soothing the squall hair off my forehead and over my ears, she smoothed me, smothered me, and I knew she loved me through all of _this_. Slowly, even for mortals, she rocked me back and forth, "Edward, dear, she will come. But you've got to ask her first!"

Slightly tutting, she went back into my trailer, a blackened cloth peeping out of her back pocket, and her hushed words crawled back to make me grin, "_You cranky little pisspot."_

The grot and throttle of Carl's pickup puttered down the drive. Hefting a hermetically-sealed Hazmat icebox from the back, he dangled it from one finger as he dawdled up to the DW.

Smelling of mammal junk and formaldehyde, Carl spat a stream of freezing cigar juice from his mouth in greeting. His eyes crinkled, his neck cricked and I wondered, suddenly, if vampires really could age.

Stopping by before his next round of bull-hockey, venereal, veterinarian shit, he admired the wood shavings and gleaming planks that stood solid beneath his feet, "Nice work, men."

Esme brushed her locks out and quickly reapplied her pale pink lipstick before running out to hug Carl tight to her tits that would never be old. Happily surprised, Carl dropped the Igloo and they knotted around each other as Junior and I softly tread back into the house.

I heard them whispering before I cut them out of my head, "_Baby, it's only been a day."_

"_I know, Carlisle, but a day is eternity to me."_

"_Esme, I need to head back out. Honey. Mmm, you feel so good."_

"_Lord, I love you. Tonight you are mine!"_

"_Baby, I am always yours. Now look after our boys, they count on you, you know?"_

"_I'm doing my best. That Eddie's a damn handful. But…sometimes? I see him, Carl."_

"_I know, he's so close. Soon. I love you."_

Their lips tazed and tasted and trawled. And in this light, through Carl's sight, Esme gave a whole new meaning to _drop-dead gorgeous._

Not quite like any other mom and dad.

We heard the sputting engine of Carl's truck grind up again after he'd quickly stocked the empty cold-keep on the porch. Poking his head around the corner of the hallway, Junior watched as Esme dreamily entered, licking her lips slowly and smiling a secret, satisfied smile.

Catching sight of us piled up behind the plyboard partition, she hooked her finger and beckoned us forward, "Best thank your father before he's out of earshot."

We all nodded, "Thanks Carl!" _coughPAWcough._

Still aglitter with smiles and langitude, Esme shooed us off to my bedroom.

"What the hell are we supposed to do in here?" Jazz wandered the cubicle that sandwiched my bed, stereo and piano.

"I dunno'. Tidy up? Because I ain't never fucked a human here before?" I shrugged my shoulders and sat on the mattress that was lumpy, unmade, and covered with magazines, music, and not a few crusty, balled-up tissues.

"I heard that, Eddie. If you don't stop being so godawful crass, I'll treat you to this wooden spoon I just bought!" Maw called lethally from the kitchen where she banged cupboard doors about near off their hinges.

Bubba bellowed out a laugh, "Hey, I know what could use a good clean…that upright of yours has seen more of Rose's fine ass than the inside of her panties!"

For a change, I decided to ignore his heckling and cracked the tunes to drown him out. Pulling fresh linens that had magically appeared from out of nowhere onto my bed, I fluffed the two unused pillows while Em and Jazz monkeyed around with my albums, completely fucking up my obsessively arranged collection.

A Domino's Pizza ad came over the radio, and Bubba was all ears and grins as he shouted, "Dudes, Domino's delivers! That fuckin' Memphis BBQ Chicken Pizza sounds right tasty, let's order!"

"Fuck me, Em! Indoor voice! Why on earth would _we_ order a pizza?" I cringed at the very thought of all that gooey cheese, tomato sauce, and _chicken_? Fucking beyond bizarre.

"I know, but the BBQ pizza motto is _Get Some South in Your Mouth. _Know what I mean?" Yes of course we fuckin' did, but just in case, Em grabbed his crotch, jiggled his wank, and sneered his lips, all the while nodding. "That's what I'm talkin' about."

I looked to Junior for support against the maniac, but he was thoughtfully nodding his head and rolling his tongue over a toothpick. _Christ_. "We are not ordering pizza."

Em rebounded, "For Bella!"

"Yeah, that would be great, Bubba, except Bella. Is. Not. Coming. Here." I felt it to be truth, and it hurt so much that my hand raised to my chest to rub small circles over my sternum, hoping to ease the ache of something huge missing from my life.

Em rolled his eyes around like cat's eyes marbles, "Whatever, whiz kid."

Holding my overflowing trashcan aloft, Jazz chuckled, "I think you mean _jizz kid._"

Cunts bumped fists while I swiped the offending rubbish into a garbage bag, "Shut the fuck up already, I don't really need another lecture from Esme about-"

"Hush up, Eddie! You seriously think I don't know how y'all, who have no need for tissues, go through so much bulk in a month?" Esme pulled the damn rug out from my feet!

Throwing back his head, Jazz laughed loudly, "Ooooh, busted!"

"Fuck you _Jizz_per," I retaliated.

Done with letting the dickheaded duo getting their rocks off at my sorry expense in my own bedroom, I skulked along the hall and peered into the kitchen where Esme snapped on her yellow warshing up gloves, because apparently the pink ones didn't do justice to her white-as-snow skin tone and Alice agreed. And she was protecting her watertight skin from _what exactly?_

Alice went back to arranging new cushions on the sofa, checking one more time to make sure she'd retrieved all the loose change from the creases. I was actually rather thankful for augury Alice's presence. Staving off complete Esme interior design warfare, Bubba and I were left with nothing more than a clean house that they'd managed to avoid turning into a cross between the Cuckoo's Nest and Southern Living.

Except for the arrangement of black calla lilies Alice had artfully arranged in an urn she had clearly carted off from someone's grave, brass plate inscription and all. And Esme, fucking Esme. She'd put a border of pastel seashells all around the 'powder room' and color matched the hand towels to it; pink as a gash and turquoise as my balls on a daily basis from never fucking getting nowhere with Bella. The hues were a fucking eyesore against the ghastly Pepto pink of the '70's commode, basin, and shower.

Jizz came into the living space and hooked his lean arms around his loony ladylove. Tangling her stained hands in his unsullied curls, Alice leaned back and looked the long way up to his eyes, "What was that I heard earlier? Something about _south in your mouth?_"

The look on Jizz's face was a call to ardor. Curling his fingers over her shoulders, he brought her close and whispered in her ear, "I could give you something very south in your sweet mouth, my love."

I didn't have to be a mind reader to know he wanted to saddle her up right then and there. The weight on my breastbone returned, like a succubus sitting on my chest and refusing to move. Completely enraptured, in love, they made me green around the gills.

Charging out the newly repaired front door, I slowed when my feet hit the scant covering of grass that was more like weeds glossing over dirt. I dawdled, looked left and then right at the end of the driveway only to see limitless nothingness. There was no rattletrap red truck belching down the lane. No Bella to be seen. Bar from in my head.

Hurting and hateful, she had absconded with Mama Brown. Rightfully so. With harsh words before, and stupid actions most recently, I'd thrown up a fortress of distrust between us, between my cock and her pussy, between my teeth and her jugular. Most importantly, betwixt my atrocious wish to make her mine, to take away her own merciful corporeality.

I began to pace. Up and down and so fast that I threw up dust-like, burning entrails of fire that trailed up and up, coiling above the trees in smoke signal. SOS.

Howling, horny, I tore to the basketball hoop on cloven feet. I jumped up and wrestled with the hoop, swinging back and forth and pulling it down with my tonnage of weight. Throwing hard jabs, I pummeled the shit out of its post. Fast fists made speedy work of the metal, the squeal of my skin meeting its not-tough-enough structure was like fingernails to a chalkboard, times a thousand. At the end, I was panting. The thing itself was nothing more than a mere jumble of beaten black framework and shredded netting limping against the ground.

I'd just let Alice and Esme usurp my kingdom. Continuously, I turned down a flotilla of twat for this mortal woman-girl-ingénue. My brass balls were quickly becoming an unbecoming shade of chintz.

A backfiring piss-yellow Gremlin pulled up to me. A Domino's placard was lit on top of the roof. Em vaulted over the porch and pounded gravel in his giddy haste, grabbing the hot cardboard from the delivery boy's hands and shoving a Franklin at him. Gobsmacked that Bubba had actually ordered a pizza, I really thought that Alice should have paid, what with all the dosh she'd scrounged from the couch.

Blowing a kiss at me, Em ambled back up to the trailer.

The Gremlin chugged out more blue smoke on its leaving, but that did not obscure his license plate. UGROWUP.

Maybe, just maybe, I was ready.

* * *

**Bubba wanted to say, "Reviews are better'n than face-planting between Rose's knockers! Have you seen those puppies? Ay-men and pass the gravy."**

**SFNYOMF: _South in your mouth! _That's Mama Brown's plate as it is the motto for her joint, it is also Domino's new slogan in these here parts, but we all know what it really stands for.**

**Brian Williams and the human waste glittering in space, looking like a comet, real.**

**So, when I'm not writing, I'm at my thread…heck, even when I am writing I'm there! We skype too, but you have to come introduce yourself first, link on my profile.**

**The next **_**Rebelward Without a Cause **_**features Maw at her finest as well as a special guest. It is written by the magnificent duo, Gasaway Alley and Viola Cornuta and is shit-ass funny!**


	11. Camp Out

**To my beta, V, I do love you so. Thanks for trying to tame my make believe words and for your understanding off my irrepressible lack of commas!**

**So much love and dirty filthy grotty thoughts to all my dames and dears and dead-sexy women who hold down the DW fort! Many ideas herein spilled out from you.**

**~~200+ FAVES! I hope I give the love back~~**

**Disclaimer: Rebelward is mine! Uh, yeah, ReBella too (thanks Vi). The rest of that business belongs to you know you. **

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_**Camp Out**_**, An Horse**

_This is a song for the one that I love  
I haven't met them yet  
But I'm quietly confident_

_Although what if like you said  
All I'm looking for  
It doesn't exist  
Oh I have to believe it does_

_Cause it's okay to fall down  
It's okay to crumble  
I've seen this before  
I have seen this before_

_And you said you wanted to crawl down deep inside  
But at this point of the last year I am happy to be alive and_

_Like that good Hole album  
I could live through this  
I can live through worse  
So play it back in reverse  
Oh play it back in reverse_

_Cause it's okay to fall down  
It's okay to crumble  
I've seen this before  
I have seen this before and_

_You wanna camp out and I wanna screw around  
In the dark  
In the dark_

_But my hips won't give anything away  
Not tonight not to you  
but I think we both know you will stay_

_And I am surprised how this fits together  
I'm surprised how we fit together  
And that I will remember  
Oh and that I will remember_

_Cause It's okay to fall down  
It's okay to crumble  
I've seen this before  
I have seen this before  
And you wanna camp out and I wanna fuck around  
In the dark  
In the dark_

_But you need to know I'd do this all again  
Just to get where I am  
Just to get where I am  
And I let you know I'd do it all again  
Just to get where I am  
Just to get where I am_

_~~ll~~  
_

I visited my monks at Mepkin Abbey, looking for solitude, peace and quiet, chants…_or something the least bit helpful._

Entering the usually tranquil, well-tended, verdant grounds that had been my thinking place, I was pelted by a flurry of feathers and a mass of monks who'd thrown off their cassocks to chase down the hens that had flown the coop. I half suspected Bubba's wicked hand in things.

Dressed only in white undershirts and matchy-matchy flapping boxers, the brethren were beet red with exertion and frustration. Skinny, spindly legs and all! They were nearly more comedic than the squawking fowl. _Jesus, what did God have against us beautiful people?_

A bit undignified, if you asked me. I chortled quietly and enjoyed the show until a flustered, blustery, rotund, de-robed monk stopped in front of me. Short of breath, he panted, "Son, you can either help out or get out. You won't find what you're looking for here."

_No shit, Sherlock._ I had been seeking solace and a soothing place to think. Obviously that wasn't going to happen!

Just then a speckled heritage Rhode Island Red flapped atop my persecutor's head. Trying to rip the talons from his tonsure, he ran about like…_well_, a chicken with its head cut off.

I called out, "Wait! What if all I want is a chicken dinner?"

_Oops. _That stopped them. Even the fucking clucky aviators looked, agawk mid-squawk, at me.

Were the Cistercians really supposed to glare? Seemed a might uncharitable to me.

_Oh fuck it, nothing wrong with a bit of altruism._

I joined the fracas with enormous laughter. Sensing with their wee pea-sized brains my predatory nature, the chickens raced away from me. It was needless, because that just spurred me on more, and it wasn't as if I couldn't catch them.

Meeting the dime-like scared stare of a shrieking Barred Plymouth Rock breed, I began to feel hungry and guilty all at once. I swear to fuck the little drummet shrieked, "_Bella!" _ in my face.

Throwing it in the apiary, I wiped my hands with the helpfully supplied Germ-X, lest I came down with a killer case of bird flu, and strolled out of the place.

With Bella on my mind, thanks to a paltry poultry-brained piece of KFC in the making.

Bella.

This thing I felt for Bella was so strong and pure and tangled up in my own self-loathing, my own need for her regard, my shifting yearning for her lubricious blood, and repentance. It was _nothing_ like the coercion I had been imprisoned with as a lead weight about my ankles from Chelsea's vacuous, voiding emotional warfare, an incarceration that was nearly the undoing of my family five years ago.

Bella had so subtly tiptoed into my heart that I didn't even recall the first markings of the strange shape my vessel was creating, making room for her. Like stars burning out, I only understood the fallout of her presence hours and days after being with her. I could have committed vampire suicide-by-Volturi when I'd made her cry outside of Richard's. _That was all it took._ Her anger, her punches, her weeping just the slightest bit before she bore up proudly, justly, to beat me down!

I just, I _couldn't_, comprehend how to tell her what I was.

She would hate me.

_I would, in her place._

But then there was her asbestos-fingered slobber-dog, Jacob. And she _knew_ what he was, yet still called him her friend.

It didn't really matter what I said or didn't. Having revealed more than ever before to Bella, she had seen me in swift motion, understood I could read minds, knew my cool touch, and somehow made clear, concise work of the fact that I didn't need to breathe.

Reminiscing on the feel, the explosion of her body against mine, the kiss of her mouth, the motion of her hips, I rubbed my lips with two fingers. Those two fingers had been soft and hard and _right inside of Bella._ I made her cum, I kissed her raw, I pulled her to me, threw her away, took off without a fucking word to the Glades; _I never said 'sorry'._

I was in deep doo-doo.

And the fucking voodoo vermin dog had nuthin' to do with it.

Back at the revamped trailer, I was shoveled straight back out, like trash that needed to go the dumpster. Esme was the forklift that shunted me out to the Bronco, "_Shoes on and shit off, Eddie_." Handing me a Tupperware box filled, no doubt, with her baked goods, Maw saw me off with a care package for the Swans as if it was visitin' day at summer camp. Her final words of encouragement? "There's more'n one way to skin a cat, dear."

_Lovely. _And now I was back to taxidermy. And Bella. And Bella and taxidermy.

Bubba jumped off the parlor couch to shout out, "DUDE! JUST HIT THAT LTC ALREADY!"

I muttered beneath my breath, "_Indoor voice, Bubba."_

Kicking my boots against the roughened door mat and mumbling to myself, my arms burdened by offerings, my soul loaded with unsaid apologies, I screwed up my face just fucking knowing that Sheriff Schwan was going to answer my knock.

And he did.

His shotgun lay across his elbows; he rolled it back a touch so he could accept my gifts. Then he slammed the door in my face.

_Piss and vinegar. _

Gumshoe Charlie all but forced me to take drastic measures.

I scrabbled back down the ramshackle porch, drove the Bronco two blocks over, parked and breathed deeply.

I jumped out and all but flew to the perimeter of Bella's house.

Scrambling through overgrown bracken and thorny thistle and feather-sharp sago palms, I skirted their abode and sank to my knees in the foliage of the backyard.

There was a fat-as-fuck, happy, grinning bullfrog lounging on a boulder behind Bella's house as if it were reclining on a La-Z-Boy. His croak was so loud and guttural that I swear to hell he must have eaten a family of possums himself by the way it sounded like he was trying to hock up a ring-tailed hairball. The warty wretch was interrupting my concentration as I watched Bella illumined like a wronged angel in her shed.

When incapacitated by rage, Bella turned to manhandling dead animals.

_Of course she did._

Plucking, forming, folding, and spreading a pelt of…_what the hell was that?_ _Ahhh, _the skin of a coyote, she made it fit, perfectly, over an artificial body. Just like me.

I felt like puking from the truth of it all.

Vibrant, she hummed with vitality while I died anew. Her life-force lifted cerise to her cheeks and dance to her eyes, alight with fervor for her employ.

And the vision of her, palpitating with a taxidermist's inspiration, was a bonerfide wet dream!

Fuck. Now I was a stalker in addition to being a dickhead and an inveterate wanker.

And Bella prodding, propping, and arranging that half-dead form? She made me feel clean and dirty and wanting that compact learned touch upon me.

At least I had a lovely clean trailer.

At least M'Esme was off my back, a tidge, care of the opening of her new favorite hangout; a coin-op Laundromat where she met her fellow coworkers for starching and sudsing: _The Slosh and Warsh._

I couldn't talk to Bella yet. A fat stinky blemished frog sat at the top of my throat. And no amount of expectorate could clear the blockage.

Meeting shaking heads and disagreeable looks, I returned home and went to bed. Not to sleep, but to dream of a better, less bitter me.

The following day found Bella at Mama Brown's, and me a foundling, hopeful thing. Em busted right in and sidled up to Rose, pinching her hard-boiled rear end. But I slunked around the perimeter of the building and cursed my idiocy one more unutterable time.

Always outside, looking in, I saw Mama coddle Bella in a way I was certain Renee never had.

Bella didn't look ballsy. She looked pale and sad. And, for the first time, small and breakable.

_Had I done this to her?_

Rose told devastatingly funny, gross jokes until Bella finally cracked a smile. "_A black bra with a wifebeater is whitetrash demure. Ask Federline and Britney! A red bra screams _slut_ and a white brassiere shouts virgin. But black? Leaves you guessing…it's classy!"_

They rolled into each other amidst giggles.

I chuckled too, my emotions so securely twined to Bella's.

It was nice to see her smile.

That night I took one step further to larceny and trespassing.

I entered Bella's bedroom.

Through her unlocked window.

I argued with myself that she was asking for it. Better me than any other beast making free with her lair.

I knew it wasn't right but I no longer gave a fuck.

Bella's eyelids were swollen like blue pillows, the tip of her nose pink, her eyelashes stuck together like wet raven feathers.

She snuffled and snored.

Squatting for a good four hours with legs spread and my forearms resting over my thighs, my fingers dangling at my knees, I looked for all the world relaxed. I was anything but.

Watching, wanton, waiting.

Her bedroom was just this side of slovenly, and I almost wanted to tidy it up. _Almost._ I did fold Bella's discarded clothing and set it all on top of her dresser.

Sitting in her ladder-backed rocker placed in the corner of the room, I focused on the drab colors of the night, blending simple dreams of human fantasies before my eyes.

Unable to sit still for more than an hour at a time, I lifted Bella's mattress, delicately, and made the origami-like hospital corners that Esme was so fond of. Pulling the sheet down tight enough to bounce a penny off, I stole over images of Bella's bright tits bouncing beneath me.

The day's warmth captured her flesh. Drops of perspiration bundled into her cleavage, so ivory flushed, nipples lax with the heat and dusky and rosy. Bella rolled to her side. Perspicacious, I wanted to taste the damp, salty secretion caught between her bare breasts. The whir of the ceiling fan mirrored my rapid breathing, lifted and then settled the sheet twisted in the dip of her waist. The fan blades did nothing to relieve the sweaty humidity clinging to her skin and hair, _but I could_.

Halcyon days.

Her nipples were always straining high peaks. I could imagine the fullness of her breasts that were young but not exactly perfect. Better, they were bottom heavy and pear-shaped.…topped by deep fuchsia promontories that would lengthen even more succulently beneath my lapping tongue, begging to be suckled more fervently.

Shaking my head, I wondered if she was simply too overwarmed, overwhelmed in dreamy fantasies, just as I was. As fully aroused as her body appeared to be. I wanted to cover her in my shirt, fold over her flesh with my arms and chest. Shield Bella from this demon that was me. From my hungering eyes that wanted her in ways I had never considered. Hot and writhing beneath me, humid and sweaty and rolling above me, with those plumes and quills of quivering skin and always her nipples waving before my face, sliding across my cheeks, hanging down pendulously over my open mouth as she rode me sinuously, before she dropped lower and I reached up with my thirsty bloody mouth cleanly taking her jutting points between my lips, washing her with my tongue.

So quickly this lust appeared. These were not the thoughts of a gentleman; they were well on their way to being the ideas and fantasies of the beast. The monster I was.

Galled. Gutted, I felt the same eviscerating vivisection that I had reaped unto others, tearing up my own innards.

Distended, intestinal, infinite self-loathing.

_Christ, I needed to stop this shit. I was getting nowhere but closer to a bruised fist and a purple cock at this rate._

My teeth like spikes, wanting to sharpen against her teats.

Tumescent beneath this trial of fortitude.

For three nights I watched Bella, trying to make up my mind that no longer belonged to me.

And now I was a creepy-stalker-dickhead-wanker-vampire who committed breaking and entering.

_In the name of what?_

This time I stole taught me many things about Bella.

I learned that she was disgusted when gnarly Charlie didn't put the toilet seat down and livid when he didn't flush – even I had to admit that was pretty damn gross -- shouting vehemently down the creaky stairwell, "I don't want to pee on top of your brewhouse piss, _dad_!"

Bella unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans on the way to the bathroom, and left the door open while she did her business so long as Charlie wasn't home.

Giving her some semblance of privacy, I at least had the decency to avert my eyes as I perched on the knobby and knotted live oak branch outside her house. Even with my lacking sight, by the black of night with her house aglow with every single lamp lit – talk about wasting of the world's finite resources, _damn_ _I was glad I wasn't paying that electric bill! --­ _it was easy to watch her moving image from room to room.

The toilet paper had to be Quilted Northern Extra Plush. I'd have to check with Esme to see if Costco stocked that brand. And it had better be placed topside on the loo roll holder or else she'd take the war to Charlie.

Yet she worked her toothpaste up from the middle of the tube.

Showering each morning to wash the dusk from her skin, Bella used a soft natural sea sponge that pulled up a carnation flush to her flesh and sent a carnal flame to ignite me. Her hairbrush had seen better days; her hair was long and the most glorious mane, crackling with lush waves and vivacity.

My vision became more precise with each passing day.

Worn from work, school, and her oddly sensual hobby, Bella went nightly about her bedtime routine. Turning off her lamp -- by that point it didn't matter as my eyes had grown used to the night -- the last thing she took off was her panties. _And then she was entirely nude. _Because it was still ninety plus degrees at eleven o'clock at night and there was no other way to beat the heat. In a last bid for innocence instead of culpability, I tried not to look. Sometimes I even succeeded. Regardless, I still gasped, still shook at the idea of all that bare skin.

While Bella slept, I rocked, wondering at the renaissance that sleep begot.

Every little thing she did was provocative. The minutiae of her habits, foibles, quirks made me ever more enamored. Knowing that I was an interloper didn't make it wrong enough for me to stop.

All of her, every single fucking human bit and breath and behavior; each laugh, shout, cry, sigh, and frown of concentration made her more dear to me.

Feeling castrated, a eunuch, de-balled and galled by this washing over of concern for her, I damn well knew I was affronting Bella with my intrusion in her bedroom. Entranced, I'd never wanted anyone more and my previously free-wheeling cock-a-doodle-drool shriveled like a limp noodle at the thought of random chickies I could have with a mere click of fingers, the quirk of my mouth, the depths of my eyes immersed in lust! That same pain in the ass appendage rose with a straight-up shot of venom in Bella's presence, immersed in her sight, her scent, her unspoiled mind.

When the restlessness of waking caused her long legs to part, scissor, and slide deeper beneath her single sheet, I crept from her room, from her house. From her life.

_~~ll~~_

Home.

The double wide never felt less like _home_ after a night in Bella's bedchamber. Not because of its refurnished nature, but because Bella wasn't there.

I was sick to death of specky mesmerizing Esme with her caresses-cum-cudgel and Bubba with his Playboy channel telethongs.

Four days later and he was still going on about the merde meteor.

Bracing myself for the worst, I jumped into the recliner and glared at Em. His silence was unexpected to say the least

In fact, sunk into the cleaned-of-coppers couch, care of magpie Malice, in our visitin' room he looked even more unnaturally pale.

"Well?" His silence was insufferable.

Whimpering, Bubba retched out, "Well what?"

"No more commentary on the Great Dung Debacle?"

A moan was all I got in reply.

He looked fucking rough. Well, rougher than usual anyways.

I strolled to him and prodded him in his granite gut just to watch him squirm, "Aren't you going to rib me about Bella?"

Doubling over, camped out on the couch under a mingey throw that had somehow escaped Maw's clutches, Bubba groaned, "Don't be such a dink, Eddie. Can't you see I'm in pain here?"

"Fuckin' A. _What?_ Did you forget that we're vampires, immortals; we can put ourselves back together and essentially do not experience pain? What the fuck're you on about now?" I was disgusted because, truth be told, Em's heckling took my mind off of the woman I wanted to be with.

"No, braw, I _really_ feel like I need to shit. _I think. _I ate some of that pizza-," the rest of his proclamation sputtered to a quick stop as he rolled around the cushions that were no longer pristine.

"MAN! I need to take a dump!"

What. The. Hell.

I said the first thing that came to mind, smirking as it hit the mark true and hard, "Well, shit a brick."

"No, you don't understand, it's more like there's a corn cob trying to force its way out my a-hole!" I knew right then that Bubba was in a bad way if he resorted to saying _a-hole_!

"You fuckin' defecatin' freeloader, I was saving that shit for Bella," I was more amused than anything else, but wanted to see just how far I could push bowel-movement-begging Bubba.

And I was morbidly curious.

As the spasm lessened, Em rebounded with, "What, you were going to win over the love of your life with stale leftovers?"

"What the fuck, Bubba? That doesn't mean you had to eat it!"

"Waste not, want not…like Maw always says," Bubba proudly thumped his chest just while I skewered him with fresh scorn.

I didn't rightly think this was what Esme had in mind, "Well, aren't you just a regular frugal gourmet."

Wincing over another contraction, he groaned, "_Ahh_, more like an _irregular_ gourmet, bro."

He rallied enough to grab the back of my head and stuff it beneath the blankets, suffocating me in a humid, noxious, never-ending fart that stung my nose! I beat on his chest and then pummeled his stomach right where it fucking hurt! Holding my breath for real this time, I used the last of my air to insult and laugh, "Fuck you, _Queefer Sutherland!" _

Seemingly recovered, Em knocked my fist and bellowed out, "Nice one. _The Lost Boys_, righteous."

Vampire vegetarianism was one thing, but somehow I didn't see this human food thing taking off as a grass roots movement, and now the trailer needed a good airing out.

Mother Fucker.

Asshole gave an almighty piss shiver and I left posthaste in full distaste.

I had me some research to do.

_~~ll~~_

Summerville, known to us hellions as Scummerville, was my destination.

Pernell's International Taxidermy. Proprietress: Billy-Sue Pernell.

The empty lobby was a museum of modified mincemeat. Strolling around, waiting for Miss Billy-Sue to appear from the back of beyond, I took in the tooled-over animals. It was a bit like a walk through my most recent meals. And damn if each and every animal wasn't giving me the stink-eye! What the hell? As if I had anything to do with them being stuffed, fluffed, and displayed. _Well, _that one antelope caught mid-leap in the corner did look a tad familiar.

My nose burned with the stench leaking out of the backroom. Pernell's smelled like boontang, and no one ever wanted to go there. Not even Bubba.

A _squelch squelch squelch_ alerted me to Billy-Sue's approach. Around the corner she came, wearing waist-high waders – that didn't bode well for the poor animals – over woobie jeans that probably belonged to Mr. Pernell, and further kitted out in a flannel shirt beneath a rubber apron that was splattered with guts like a soldier's flackjacket.

Her frazzled hair was shorn like sheep's brillo close to her scalp. A model might-could carry it off. Not so much Billy-Sue. Sans makeup that might have helped her rodent-like features, in a most weird way she was shades of Lurline. They could have been awkward half-sisters. Or half breeds. Or inbreds. _Or whatever._

Offering my hand to hers that was sticky with visceral discharge, I held back a gag and introduced myself.

And my rotten first impressions were immediately turned ass over tea kettle.

The sparkle in Billy-Sue's eyes lit, her intelligence rebounded off the trophy ridden walls like the boom of her deep stately sure voice, "Eddie, what can I do you for?"

"Miss Billy-Sue, I did a bad, bad thing."

She nodded her head to encourage me on.

"I made a mess of things with my girl-, _shit, _sorry! With this woman, and I need to make it up to her," I stepped my way over truths that I hadn't even admitted to myself yet.

"And?"

"She's an amateur taxidermist. Do you give lessons?" I pulled out the dazzle to appeal to her susceptible nature.

She merely laughed and belted me on the arm, almost as fuckin' hard as Bubba. "Not usually. But, baby, with this economy I don't turn down any business! What did you have in mind?" B-S squinted up to me from her 5'3" height and smiled in anticipation.

With the plans hashed out, a voucher in hand that had been calligraphed by yours truly, I had one final question for Billy-Sue, "I just gotta' ask. No offense intended, but what's the meaning of Pernell's _International_ Taxidermy?"

With the determined look of a serious businesswoman, she answered me with a slight laugh at her own expense, "It's simply a ruse, know what I mean, Eddie?" I nodded my head, 'course I did.

"Besides, everyone's doing it. Take, for instance, Charleston _International_ Airport…they don't even have customs! Am I right?"

Grinning at her I had to admit that she was, in fact, right.

Billy-Sue walked me to the door and saw me off with a downhome hug and a holler, "Y'all come back soon now, y'hear? And good luck with your gal, Eddie."

_~~ll~~_

On the fifth night of trying to find my balls, I came upon Bella's window to find her in a torrent of tears. Without a second thought, I shoved up the rattling warped frame and landed like a cat in the middle of her bedroom.

Shakily, she looked up from the ball she'd made of herself in the middle of her single-sized bed. Opening her mouth like a guppy sucking oxygen from water, Bella found no words as I sat next to her, pulled her into me, caressing the heaving sobs of her back, "Aw shit, Bella. I'm sorry, I know you don't want to hear it, but I didn't mean to make you cry."

There was a subtle change in the quaking of her frame beneath my stroking fingers. Before long it came out in the guise of maniacal mirth, "_What_? No. I mean _yes_, you asshole, you made me cry," she gulped back another scatty laugh, "But I'm crying because my iPod just dropped into the toilet and it's fucking ruined!"

I shrank back and tried not to adore her even more. But, _damn it, _that gave a whole new meaning to iPotty!

The endless ferns of her black lashes looked bitten by rain, her face and chest blossomed under the rash of tears and refueled ire aimed at me, "Just what the hell are you doing here, creeper?"

Swiftly I dismounted her bed.

She followed, that fucking pointy finger that she's probably just shoved up a possum's ass prodding me in the torso, "You know the whole world doesn't revolve around you, right?"

My head hung low, a hand balled at my waist and the other clenching the back of my neck, I shuffled my feet. Ashamed, bashful, made damn near stupid and not one iota blasé, I watched her bare, beautiful feet stomp to and fro.

Bleakly, gingerly resting on the edge of her mattress, I started blathering, "Fuck. I could have known; your mind is just…_fuck._" I gave her absolutely no introduction as I whipped the green-on-white envelope from my back pocket, grabbed her swinging hand and palmed my gift, _my apology_, off.

"I got you this, but I would have given you a new MP3 had I known," my eyes remained shunned, downcast, disregarded.

I heard the tearing of paper, the crisp tangle and crumple of heavy cardstock when Bella opened the sheath and read through its contents.

The bed bounced and her giggle shivered through me! Bella was on her knees next to me with my face between her hands as she plucked gorgeous, full-mouthed, wet kisses all over my cheeks, eyes, brows, lips, and ducked her head to my chest and I felt her wide grin through my t-shirt, "No." Shaking her sedge-like hair, "This is perfect!"

I was mind-boggled, ecstatic, "So you'd rather have taxidermy classes than an iPod?"

I tried to scowl as I took her sharp chin within my hand and raised those glistening glory-brown eyes to mine. Her huge smile skipped perfect flat stones across the placid lake of my heart.

"Yes."

She was so close. Just a tug forward had Bella almost in my lap and her lips against my own. Whispering before the kiss, "I am sorry, Bella." The lap of her tongue and crease of her heavenly bowed mouth made me feel damp and hungry. Not for her blood, only for her insouciant touch.

With simply my hand cupping her jaw, I shifted sideways and took first her upper and then her lower lip between my own, groaning with the sexiness of such an innocent touch. Diving against each other, I embraced Bella, sat her in my lap, made a cage around her shoulders and back, and deepened our kiss until our tongues ranged back and forth. Basking in her glow. Elated that I might be forgiven.

With a hiccup and an _mmmm_, Bella found my cheek, my eyebrows, my ticklish ear.

I smothered myself in the heaviness of her tresses that fell unhindered down her back, "Would you call on me tomorrow? I'll make you something to eat."

Bella bubbled with glee again, chuckling against my throat in such a luxurious way that my skin flattened and then swelled up, seeking more. "Yes, Eddie. But I've heard about you and your game. I don't wanna' eat possum, so you better make it good."

_Happiness_. _This_ was happiness.

Brought to a dead stop with her next utterance, "Eddie, I swear to hell this is your last chance. And, for the record, _stalker,_" she whispered that last bit, "I'm not even going to ask how you got into my house. For future notice? You are not to come into my bedroom unless invited."

Stern and serious, she continued to play a sensual, racking tune all over my neck that was craned to the side.

Bella was back to her usual plucky self, and it was heartening.

Pulling those angelic siren lips back to mine, I snacked over them, knowing I would say any damn thing she wanted to hear, "_No'm_, _yes'm_, whatever you say, _miss_."

Sucking so salaciously on my tongue that I wondered if a slight bit more groveling would convince Bella to take that heathenish caress lower, she let loose a final time and gave me the skinny with narrowed eyes continuing to darken, dance, leap and dilate, "And I _know _you're keeping secrets." I bit my own tongue, Bella swirled her hips into me, "And I will wait."

Having already crossed the line, I didn't see the harm in doing so one more time even though I cringed as I asked, "Can I stay the night?"

Bella sat back, fidgeting with the stretched out neck of my t-shirt but looking up at me boldly, "Have you already spent the night with me?"

I gulped over the huge, sickening lump in my throat, deigning to answer the blunt query head on, "Yes."

Against my thromboning heard-heart, Bella nuzzled, "Well, seeing as you've apparently already made yourself at home, you might as well stay."

Wide of eyes, I leant back on my elbows as she decanted. Dropped her clothes to the floor. Bared herself to me.

Dumbstruck and rye-mouthed, I observed her walking around the bed, lifting the coverlet and sinking inside.

Bella's invitation made sour mash of my guts, churning with anxiety and anticipation. To hold her throughout the night!

"Well?" she made a dented shape of her pillow with her fists and settled back down.

I looked over my shoulder to her in complete consternation, "Well what?"

Bella was amused at my discomfiture, "Do you always sleep fully dressed?"

A bark of laughter, an unregulated smile, "Actually, Bella, I usually sleep very little."

She huffed and closed her eyes, "Shut up and take your clothes off already."

Fucking Hell. I loved her potty mouth. I myself had cotton mouth. My stomach roiled and now I knew how Bubba had felt after eating him some _South in Your Mouth_ pizza.

She blinked and leaned up on her elbows to watch. First my shirt, dropped to the floor. I knew the burn of Bella's eyes all over my chest and watched her hands crawl out to knead the sheet.

With her sailing brown ocean eyes to mine, I unbuttoned, _slowly_, my jeans. Shifted them down my legs, kicked them to the side and stood to my full 6'2" height.

Licking her lips, Bella worked her way up over my legs, and I planted them wider apart. She bit her bottom lip until a bleached crescent appeared. Her fingers twitched, opened, closed when she met my tight black boxer briefs. Her eyelashes fluttered like a butterfly to the blooms of lantana. Hastening over the stiffened muscles of my abdomen, up my pecs, sinking back once, twice, thrice to my arms and shoulders, Bella made headway.

With my eyes snared to hers, she smiled so enticingly I could not help but be called to her.

Three, two, one step away, Bella shook her hair out in feminine fan and sank back, "And you can wipe that scandalous smirk off your mouth, Eddie. No funny business, mister. I may have forgiven you, but you exhaust me and I need my sleep."

Climbing in behind her, I said a silent prayer that the weak bedstead wouldn't collapse. It creaked, cried out, and then rooted like soot to the bottom of a fireplace.

Sighing, she drew closer, sank back against my hips, thighs, torso, arms.

Welcomed, I held Bella, one arm a rigid pillow for her head, her hair prickled into my armpit. The other wrapped around her waist, my wandering troublesome palm between her breasts, my elbow to her navel.

My fingers stroked, not to incite but to calm.

"_Mmm_, you feel nice and cool," Bella sighed like a sunburn under the refreshing touch of aloe.

"Not too tight?" I hushed against her cheek.

"No," muffled assent.

"Too close?"

"No," sleepy affirmation.

"Too cold?" I licked her earlobe just a little, to hear that sweet giggle.

"_No_," a whimper of acquiescence, acceptance.

Ribboning my hand from between her tits, lightly touching upon each downy peaked nipple, I made a big bowl of the delicious inclines of her ass and sealed it more firmly against my groin.

Bella snuggled into slumber.

The dew was like spider tracery webs upon the welts of her flesh. I feigned sleep. Wanted it. Imagined what it would be like to lie down and doze serenely. Missing out on this bit of humanity. Dreams troubled me every waking hour. But they were figments, fuckery, foolishness, and not reality.

As a silenced troubadour, I held back my words and my humming and made do with breathing the air of Bella, in and out.

Benzine cum engorged me. The buzz of eroticism smattered me. Bella's blood, Bella's sex inflamed me like the fire water of Kentucky bourbon.

My fingertips had never been this plush. Her body was the most intricate filigree.

I never wanted to leave. Never begged to sleep more. My erection beat faintly with each of her long slumbering breaths, my heart superseded it all.

_I have to tell her soon._

_

* * *

  
_

_**~~Eddie wanted to say, "Fuckin' A! I need some lovin' tonight, ladies. A review will do nicely, and then I've got something a bit dirtier in mind."~~**_

Sorry for the wee delay, here's what I've been writing in the interim:

_Incarcerated _is complete, so go have a read.

_Portentous Prompts_ for the Twilight 25 challenge – go check 'em out!

I am entering the MixItUp contest leaping off from the sexy irreverent prompt _Touch._

Last, but _oh_ by no means least, I have been working with blondie AKA robin on an entry for Les Femmes Noires contest. It's called _The Bride of Edward Cullen_ (you can snort, we did). Here's the summary to whet your appetite: _When Edward reneges on his promise to 'try' and changes Bella without testing the sexual waters, she emerges revamped bloodthirsty, bitter, and bitchy. The Cullens reap the rewards of her perpetual PMS in lethal, dead funny, and disgusting ways. Don't mess with the Virgin Vamp!_

It'll be out on Friday, so alert our collab profile: SinisterSisterhood.

_~~ll~~_

Huge love to Tallulah, writer extraordinaire of _Elemental_, for reccing DC's! And, as ever, mad kisses to C-Me-Smile of the gorgeously lusty _Begin Again_ for her beautiful mention.

Mega fucking huge thanks for the clippings, images, Youtubes from your own hometowns! Keep 'em coming. I may not remember to say thanks if I use them, but they are so much appreciated. And even if they never find a way into DC's please know that I have laughed my arse off regardless!

Check the latest _Rebelward Without a Cause_: _Mad About the Boy_ and stay tuned for more. Bella, per moi, will be coming.

The Dead Thread link is on my profile.

Favorite fics that I am reading: _Dark Side of the Moon_, blondie AKA robin, _Salacious Behavior and Earnest Speaking_, by ThisColony, and _Lessons Learned _written by mistyhaze420 (sweet innocent piercing JxE slash).

PS. If you drop your iPod in the toilet, DON'T TURN IT ON, and contact me immediately, I speak from experience (unfortunately), Rie~


	12. ConfEddie and the Cupcakes

Thank you Mistress **V** for your fabulous beta-ness!

**Viola Cornuta, **special lovely crazy thanks to you and also to each and every **Dead Fed gal**! Y'all are the saucy key limes in my…_pie._

Disclaimer: Seriously, I gotta' say it again? Yes, yes, dear Eddie belongs to me and the Double Wide. SM can keep The Edward and his shiny silver Volvo; we prefer Broncos!

~~The moment y'all have been waiting for. Or one of the moments. _Something like that._~~

* * *

**ConfEddie and the Cupcakes**

Yeah, so this was…_nice._

Closing my eyes, breathing into her the damp, dark hair at the base of her neck, I matched my respiration to Bella's. I locked her closer to me, my forearm between her tits, holding the weight of one of them just a little bit, because hell if I could resist that when the damn things were more soft than the dented feather pillow my head rested on.

This was _nice_. Except… my dick was throbbing. Cold, rigid, and beating in time with our simultaneous breaths. The fat head of my erection was round, turning purple, full of venom and reaching out of the top of my shorts to meet the cleft of her bare ass.

I bit my lip to muffle the moan of my flesh touching hers.

In her sleep, she sank even further to me, and threw her arm back over me, grabbing my ass. _Hard._ My neck cranked to the side, my throat tensed with icy arteries working overtime, and my mouth opened to a silent growl that shook within my chest, sending shivers down her back. Closing my eyes tight, I whispered, "_Oh, fuck!_"

I could just slip my briefs down and slide my cock into her pussy…now that would be _nice_.

I tried to remain still and quiet--something that I was adept at--but when she turned in my embrace and worked one long, slim leg over my hips to anchor me to her, my cock right fucking against her snatch where I could feel the fierce temperature, I lowered my head into her neck and ran my hands around her so that in my large clasp I held almost all of her shoulders and the indent of her womanly waist.

With a sigh and one more little grind, Bella sank into Never Never Land. How she could goddamn sleep through the tumult of eroticism that enveloped us was beyond me!

I shook with laughter until the bed dipped and swayed like a boat at sea when a sliver of drool fell from the corner of her pursed plump lips to skid across my chest.

No doubt my cock was a dribbling monster, too.

Rolling over, I took Bella with me, and relaxed into the Eddie-and-Bella-sized depression the mattress created around us. Her tits settled against me, scraping nipples nodding against the width of my muscles like hard candy; her perspiration cooled and dried and stuck her to me.

And it was…_glorious._

So quiet, aside from tender little snores. No thoughts to bar out. No words. No need to wonder anymore, or fucking beat myself up over my assholishness. _That made a change._

Silence, aside from snores and my erection that I swear to hell I could hear trying to tear through black cotton in its search for Bella's sweet cunt.

Hush, apart from snuffles, my stupid wanting-stuff-Bella shaft, and the blasted cocksucking crickets! Didn't the infinitesimal insects ever fucking sleep? I'd make damn sure to stomp on as many of those chirping, rubbing, _noisy_ motherfuckers as possible in the morning.

Disturbing my peace.

Minutes and hours were a sanctuary instead of blind torture.

I closed my eyes and zoned into reverie.

With a snap, I came to! I woke up? All I knew was I jolted up through something that was pretty goddamn close to sleep – I'd have to ask Bubba about his feigned, possum-like slumber; what it felt like. Because it _seemed_ like I'd rested.

Dim sun squashed against the single dormer window of Bella's room, lighting up my skin to its usual sheen. Dawn. Thank the Christly lord the crickets finally stopped their incessant _chee, chee, chee_, because that shit had been obnoxious.

Billowing around us, lifting with my breaths and the licks of air sent down from the ceiling fan, Bella's tresses tickled my face, swam down my chest, sat in the creases of my elbows, and larked like little cockteasers right to the tip of my dick-- which was still, of-fuckin'-course, not asleep at all.

Needing to ease the pressure just a bit, I pressed my palm into my long cock and bit my top lip. _Yeah, that wasn't helping at all!_

Bad idea.

Unwrapping Bella from around me like the best goddamn centerfold ever – _Fuck you, Hefner! _-- I skittered from beneath her, replacing my insatiably hard body with a ductile pillow. The one I'd "slept" on, the one that smelled of me. She lowered immediately into it, muffled a little, "_MmmmEddie,"_ and returned to snoring and, _yeah_, just another little trickle of drool.

Hitching up her leg, as if she was tolling it right over my hip to press closer, Bella showed her fucking hot pink slick pussy to me!

I gasped and looked, making a devilish carbon copy of her wet, lickable, beautiful delta before I tore my eyes away with a harsh internal reprimand, "_Fucking clothes. Get them on NOW._"

I looked three more times, shook my head, dressed in record fashion, even for a vampire. With trembling hands and held breath, I covered Bella back up with the pale lavender sheet, shielding my eyes from beholding her exquisiteness. For damn sure I didn't want any other creeping Tom catching sight of that succulent flesh!

Dazed, I leapt out her window; I had work to do at the double wide. There was Em's stench to clear out, and, _fuck, _did we even have toilet paper? The Kleenex was in abundance, but I wasn't sure about bog roll. I'd requested the honor of Bella's company, and now I had to make good.

Walking fast, so much more than soaring or running, I still felt her naked skin pushed into all the precipices of my body. _God_, I wanted to fuck Bella! I wanted to have her entirely nude, standing in the middle of a room, her beautiful round ass seated in my hands, knees jutting to the side as she wound those perfect long legs around my waist, and my arms alone held her to me. Not a bed, nor a wall; just me and her, fucking!

Just then, halfway home, a lone cricket screeched at me. I turned to the side and hunted the dickhead out, looking beneath leaves and honing in on his foghorn leggy call. Lifting the turd between my thumb and index finger, I inspected the insignificant husk of a body before squishing it. _Bastard had interrupted my fucking fantasy._

_If only I could smash Bubba like a cricket._

He was sitting on the porch couch, whittling. The man displayed exemplary dexterity. It was really fucking weird and remarkable, actually, that this giant vampire juvenile had the forbearance to sit still long enough, and could contain his power enough, to create the small totems he perpetually carved.

Today's work?

I squinted and leaned in closer.

_Ahh, yes, The Position of the Wife of Indra._

That looked…_nice._

Bubba was steadily whittling his way through the Kama Sutra. Bless his dark, pornographic heart.

But enough was e-fuckin'-nough of the farts!

Posing the teeny wooden bodies just so, grinning like an ape, Em took his chisel to his temple to scratch that itch, "What the fuck's going on?"

I braced one foot on the step next to him and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well," and he dug that tool into his ear to squirrel around, "M'Esme came through here like Hurricane Hugo with more paper goods than I've ever seen about an hour ago," –_thank you Esme! I hoped she'd taken note of the brand of toilet paper – _"Now, we know _she knows_ about the meat tenderizin' that goes on here, but this was just plain freaky, even for Martha-wannabe Maw! She filled up the bathroom with toilet paper, muttering, _'Quilted Northern…only the best….'_ She done lost her mind proper, right?"

Continuing to regale me with tales of Merry Maid M'Esme, Bub flicked nonexistent, waxy residue from the chisel, blew wood shavings off of Indra fucking his wife – _and here I thought I was the consummate multitasker –_ "And then Alice-"

"You mean the Thieving Thumbelina?"

Em nodded, "Yup, the one and the same. TT showed up shortly after, all black and _scary_," Bubba shivered in mockery and started to work on his left ear, motioning with his mouth as if by contorting his face he could conjure the fictitious wax to the surface.

"Needless to say, the dark-hearted duo about bombed the trailer with Lysol, whining about flatulence and _damn-near-not-a-vampire,_ _and_ stocked the fridge with a gallon of sweet tea."

"That's how come I'm sat outside."

"So, the tea is next to the half gallon of blood in the refrigerator?" I wondered aloud. I was fucking thirsty!

"Naw, braw, they cleaned that shit out. But I totally farted, way down deep into the sofa cushions, and that stank ain't airing out for weeks!" In his excitement, Bubba sheared off Miss Kama Sutra's limber legs. _Whoops._

"So, you're feeling better then?" I stood just inside the door and prepared to duck and cover just in case IBS Bubba felt the need to break wind again.

"Oh yeah. Right as rain. I mean, it got a bit dicey there for a bit; I'm pretty fuckin' certain I touched cloth at one point. But nothin' doin'."

_Jesus_, _that was a visual I didn't need!_ I shuddered and retreated further into the trailer, feeling like I might just blow chunks myself, but Bubba was undaunted, "Obviously all the toilet paper isn't for me, else Maw would've shown up with it last night. So what the fuck's up?"

In the time it took to entertain Em with stories of Billy-Sue Pernell, (during which, he interjected, "_You totally teared up when you saw stuffed Bambi, didn't you?"), _Chief UpChuck_, _(_"Aw yeah, if it's yellow, let it mellow"),_ and about Bella and her iPod, ("_Ooh, ooh, I know! She and I can get matching shirts—iPooed and iPotty'd!"_) Carl and Junior had joined us.

I had exactly five hours to figure out what the hell I was going to make for Bella's dinner.

I opened cupboards, _bare_, scavenged around the Frigidaire, _empty as Bubba had said_, and poked into the pantry that held nothing more than a year's supply of paper towels and a few boxes of straws. _Because sometimes, Em liked to sip his coagulated cocktail._

As I continued to wonder what the fuck Bella would eat, already more than a little grossed out by the idea of Beaufort Spew, the boys thought it wise to chime in with _helpful_ suggestions:

"Pigs in a blanket!" came from Em.

"Shit-on-a-shingle," Jazz joked, doffing his cowboy hat in tribute to our very own constipated vampire.

Carl chimed in with, "Chee-tos?"

Us sons turned six suspicious eyes on him, "What? They go _Crunch!_"

_Jesus H._ "Y'all are cruisin' for a bruisin'," I growled.

This was a clusterfuck of giant proportions. And I had t-minus four hours.

Jazz gave it one more try, as if his cock were a divining rod, "My longhorn says…_cupcakes._"

I was frowning up a pure furrow at Jizz to which he shrugged and proclaimed, "Eddie, chicks dig 'em. _Trust._"

I looked at the three stooges and they all nodded sagely.

_Fucking cupcakes._

"But what about something more nourishing? Say, meatloaf?" I asked.

"_Cough-_eatmymeatloaf_-cough," _Carl grabbed his crotch in a not-so-subtle demonstration of what _meatloaf_ brought to mind.

Junior chortled, "Et tu, Carl?"

We all cracked up, but I sobered first...this was fucking getting me nowhere fast!

The rotary phone jangled, Bubba brought the receiver to me, the cord stretched near-straight, and with his hand cupped over the receiver he whispered, "_Bride of Chucky for you."_

I smirked and held the phone away from my ear only to hear, "Cupcakes," coming through loud and clear and surrounded by giggles.

_Fuckin' idiots._

About half an hour later, Rose arrived to shove a Styrofoam box from Mama Brown's into my hands. Glaring at me odiously, she snarled, "Bella's favorites," and ticked off the dishes enclosed in the stench-ridden carton, "Pecan-crusted pork chop, Mama's mashed taters, broad beans and bacon."

Her thoughts were just as concise, _"Last chance, genius."_

"And I hear you're providin' the dessert?" Rose lifted one eyebrow at me like the damn expressive thing itself was an interlocutor in this interrogation.

With my acquiescence, she grabbed Bubba by the hand and ushered the three out of the double wide, "We'll just leave you to it then."

"Wait! Just what the hell am I supposed to do with this?" I lifted up the steaming box of food.

Swatting Rose on the butt at the side of her El Camino, Bubba mumbled, "Paula Dean, you ain't," as he came back to the porch. But, at least he had the fuckin' courtesy to talk me through the fine art of re-heating.

"Paula who?"

Two hours of Food Network later and I wished I'd never asked. Now I knew, _boy did I ever_, who Paula Dean was. Southern fried kitchen biscuit who was the fucking spitting image of Miss Piggy right down the squeal of laughter and the upturned snout.

She was brought to me via FN, one of Em's more bizarre channel choices, and the monstrosity of our satellite dish so unnecessarily enormous that it could probably run interference with the space station orbiting above. Or the shit Sputnik I bet was still circling the earth like a floater that wouldn't flush.

Making those fucking cupcakes.

For fucking Bella.

_Glorious_ Bella.

Who was most adamantly _not_ fucking me.

Because Bella had gotten to me, hard.

I'd made a mad dash to M'Esme's to rummage through her alphabetized, organized, Ziploc-infested larder.

I'd even had to trek through the scruffy, weed-detonated, sewer bed imploded, hubcap-bedecked squalor of mine and Bubba's second-door neighbors because I'd forgotten the milk. Right next door was even worse, with its concreted-over front acreage – _That just made for easy maintenance, didn't it?_ – upon which an industrial-sized Rubbermaid Groundskeeper ashtray stood square and center. A veritable smoker's outpost. A bumpkin ode to tabaccy.

After knocking on the door, I stood back a distance and formed my hands like a jockstrap in front of my junk. The middlin' thirty-somethin' MILF with the smokin' bod yanked the screen back and commenced her habitual devouring of me with her frazzled pale gray eyes. Squinting, realizing that my hands at my groin were just making her more attentive to my endowments, I relaxed a bit and cordially inquired, "Sorry to bother you, Miss Delia, but may I trouble you for a cup of milk?"

Believe me, if I could have substituted blood I gladly would have, what with the way this obviously sexually rampant mom-of-too-fuckin'-many was eyeing me up and down, licking her lips and plumbing the crotch-depths of my jeans that sat like a soft, worn glove around my dick and ass. Her lips quivered the perfectly practiced amount as she zeroed in on the glaringly long thick shape of my cock. I was tempted to ask her if kids really were cheaper by the dozen, because by my reckoning, that was total cockamamie bullshit_**.**_ I half expected her to pull out her milk-engorged tatas, _due to baby number one hundred and one she was constantly lugging about_, and tweak her nips to jet a hot stream of Mother's Best into the measuring cup I proffered. Thank the fucking lord almighty she didn't. As soon as my cup was filled with the cool white froth from her buzzing ancient refrigerator, I beat a hasty retreat. All vampire and speedy-like, I went back to my kitchen and Paula D., still prattling off her mind-numbing instructions in her nasally, high-pitched twang.

At one point I dropped the dish towel. I smiled, because even I knew that meant guests were on their way.

When I finished with my culinary excursion, I had to admit I was not half-bad in the kitchen, but not nearly as fucking god-like as I was in the bed -- _or_ kitchen, or truck, _or_ hunting scree. I completed the dainty delicacies with a maraschino cherry each.

Topped with copious amounts of pale pink frosting, the plump cakes were almost my idea of heaven. They immediately put me in mind of Bella's tits! Before I knew it, I was fondling two of those twinkies and imagining her pert beauties peaked by lovely, tight, ripe, red nips! What the devil? And what the hell was this human sorceress doing to me? First of all, I didn't say 'devil'! I said _fuck, cunt, whore, shit, twat_! Secondly, when I shook myself out of my fucked up, twisted daydream, those two little cupcake cunts were crumbled in my clenched fists! Ah, what the hell, there were four more left and that would just have to do.

What was even worse than making tasty treats for a chick that was not even sucking my cock? Arranging the cupcakes on a plate, knowing that Bella would be standing here, in _my_ house, in less than two hours. The happiness I felt was uncomfortably untainted by sex or blood or beer. I felt like I'd taken a steel-toed boot to the head.

After a final walk-through, (checking the correct placement of the loo roll, building a small pyramid of the shell-shaped, peach-colored handsoaps, lighting a scented candle on the mantle next to Alice's urn to ward off the last, lingering fumes of Bubba's bout with the bogus bowel movements), I sat my ass down on the porch couch and willed the neighboring entertainment to take my mind off of my chest tightening, my ears burning as if someone was whispering about me, and my cock, which was fully loaded and functioning…_business as usua_l.

As the days heated up, so did the tempers of the motley inhabitants of Luxury Hollows Trailer Park.

Delia's old man came chuggin' up the road in his junkyard Penske moving truck: his normal mode of transportation. Huffing, cursing the diesel behemoth, he pulled into the drive. I wondered what the hell he was always hauling back and forth, but not enough to delve into the cesspool of his mind.

Tossing a load of debris to the side of the road, the leavings of boiled peanuts and pork scratching wrappers, he stamped down on the litter and started to make his way to his Old Lady in the Shoe, when Louisiana came barreling down from across the road, spitting with anger and menace, "Y'all are _rinters_ that's why you don't give sheeit! I oughta' call the po-lice on your ass!"

Testosterone was flying like slobber from a bloodhound and it was Louisana vs. Texas with me at a ringside seat!

I popped the top off a Pabst, drained half in one pull and topped it up with some fresh from the blood-bank, crimson goodness.

Standing off, Louisiana was good and worked up over slovenly Texas's trashheap of a yard, but just as fists clenched and pulled back to pound one another to the ground, Delia sauntered out with her cleavage bouncing, and Louisiana instantly backed down, reverting to a good ol' boy with a boobie fetish.

Needless to say, despite the nullified fight, my neighbors provided hours of amusement that rivaled daytime soaps in my book!

Alice caught up with me from Jazz's to send a little snippet of Bella; she'd just turned into the Circle K gas station about five miles down the road.

_~~ll~~_

My sprint to the fill-up had at least cleared my mind of nervousness.

The chime on the door alerted the clerk to my presence, and he nodded at me with a, "How're you doin', boss man."

Since it was Saturday afternoon and the lottery drawing was up over five million, the queue was long. Bella was halfway down. Wearing a sundress of pale meadow green with little white flowers and a full skirt that hit two inches above her knees, she was breathtaking.

I fucking loved her in a dress! Easy access never looked so good.

I shouldered through the line until I sidled up behind her, earning myself a few pissed off glares until I snarled lowly in my chest and let my wide, glinting, lethal smile speak for itself.

"_Mmmm_," I hummed right into the nape of her neck, bared by a nice high ponytail that I could grab and hold on to while I fucked her from behind, and settled my hands to her hips, feeding my lust on her lush curves.

Her little gasp was gratifying. The manner in which she leaned into me, even more so. Her words refuted the obvious reaction of her body and were tinged with a pleased smile, "Eddie, we're in a gas station for goodness sake!"

"Ask me if I care," my pursed lips followed the slender tendon that ran from her neck to her shoulder, and I nearly moaned at the taste I had gone too long without.

"Do you always greet your woman with such caresses?"

"Depends. Do you always take so kindly to being touched in public by your beau?"

I ran my hands from her fingers to her shoulders, brushed across her collar bone and curled forward over her to link our fingers while my chin rested atop her wavy hair.

The man ahead purchased a brace of Colt 45 and smokes; Camel Unfiltered.

We stepped up and I snickered at the erection-enhancing pills displayed on the counter, right fucking next to packets of fake vampire teeth complete with trickles of blood…candy, and edible of course. I laughed loudly because, _really_, as if we needed fangs to rip flesh off soft tissue from bone. I could shear through every person in this gas station in under a minute and still come out looking good.

Mindful of the tally, I pulled out a crisp bill. Bella slapped my hand away with a huff and placed a twenty on the till, "I can take care of myself, thank you very much."

_No doubt._

Leaving the store, Bella looked around, "Where's your truck?"

Unthinkingly, I'd run here in order to drive her back, so I wouldn't waste one drop of time with her. "Uh, I…I ran out of gas and was just coming up to get some."

Bella grimaced in knowledge of my lie, "We need to talk, Eddie."

_No fucking doubt._

Ushering her to the faded red Chevy, I helped her into the driver's side and loped around. She leaned over the seat and popped open the door for me.

She had to choke the engine to get up a good roar.

Her hand on the knob of the gearshift, and the twisting, up-and-down motion put me in mind of her hand on my cock. Pushing the clutch to the floorboard tightened her thigh, and her dress lifted higher. Bella certainly knew how to drive a stick.

To shut her up before she got started on this talking shit, I plonked a new iPod into the draped cloth of her lap, the upgraded one with all the bells and whistles. Looking down, Bella's eyes grew wide with joy and the biggest smile grew over her mouth, her cheeks were bright when she turned to me, "Eddie! I don't know what to say." She pulled me to her by the back of my neck and sank a soft, long kiss to my lips. I'd take that over words any damn day!

Happiness made her laugh into a vibrant twinkling. Stopping at a red light, the only one between here and East Bumfuck Egypt, Bella scrolled through the playlists that I'd exactly replicated before tucking the slim metal MP3 into the glovebox. She had to reach over me, and I bent closer for a look-see of her breasts where the fabric gaped. A punch to my shoulder made quick work of my gawking of the pillow-soft, ivory hills and the teasing cleavage between.

Gleefully Bella asked, "So, _my beau_, huh?"

I grinned and looked out my window, "Yeah."

"Are you?"

"Yes," I fucking hoped yes!

"And what about you? _My woman_?" My stomach was harnessed tighter than a wrangled stallion waiting for her answer.

A warm hand rubbed up and down my thigh, "Yeah," Bella sighed.

The rest of the ride was peaceful and exciting. She kept her palm on my leg, tracing frail patterns like a cocoon of silk over the denim-clothed skin; tickling, scratching, turning me on.

By the time we reached the double wide, my leg was jittering like a dog in heat!

I was nervous as fuck when I led Bella up the porch. She took everything in with curiosity and a few laughs that worried me. I settled back against the railing, Bella stood between my splayed legs, and we kissed. Just once, our tongues clandestine and coy and commingling with tips and sips of caresses.

When we parted, our smiles were mirror images.

Bella walked away from me to sit on the ice chest. The ice chest that housed our blood.

Fingering the clasp, the one I'd neglected to padlock, Bella asked, "What've you got in here, animal carcasses?"

I snickered and strolled to Bella, exerted the littlest amount of pressure to force the lid back down, "Something like that."

Bella looked from my hilled bicep to the crack forming across the closure, "Jesus, Eddie! Work out much?"

I chuckled, "Uh, no. I don't really need to."

My forearm was hard and so close to her hip, my hand two steps away from her ass.

Bella's cheeks lit up and her eyes darkened. Blasting like wildfire, she ran her fingers up my arm and tried to encircle my muscle, "Flex for me."

"_Ha ha!_ I don't think so," with her hand wrapped around my bicep that was really nearly lax for all my showing off, I knew I could break her fingers with one curl. I smirked and kissed the corner of her mouth, "I don't want to hurt you."

Our next kiss was hungry, swampy, wet, and heated, with Bella turning into my side and breasts rubbing an inferno against my shoulder. Sighs and moans became incensed, and before I knew it, Bella was reclined on her elbows, I was between her legs, her skirt had risen far too high for modesty, and my cock was loving the feel of secret, sensual heat right up against her pussy.

I pushed Bella away by her shoulders and grinned and licked her swollen, savory mouth, muttering, "Let's take this inside."

I'd never been more grateful for Esme or the half-inch pincher than now. The trailer was fresh and airy instead of a freakish, frat-like den of iniquity. Bella inspected every room with avidity, making small comments of surprise to which I replied, "So, you basically thought I lived in a hovel?"

Bella rounded and hugged me tight with a laugh that shook the both of us, "Well, _yeah._"

Back in the living room, Bella turned from the mantle as I handed her a glass of sweet tea, fully spiked with her requisite too-many spoonfuls of sugar. Accepting the beverage, she eyed me up and down and then looked to the urn.

_That fucking urn!_

Disquieted, I placed myself in front of it, hoping to stave off comments.

Sitting on the couch, far too ladylike to remark on the nasty Em stink that still contaminated the cushions, Bella took up a new line of questioning. "Let's just cut to the chase, Eddie. You're ridiculously strong, incredibly fast, you can read minds but not mine, and your have the worst fucking circulation of anyone I've ever met!" Then she mumbled indistinctly, "_And then there's that little thing about holding your breath."_

I downed my entire beer to buy time. Like I could concentrate at all with her sitting there, slim legs crossed, skirt rising, confused smile considering me. Her appearance tugged new figments of Bella bruising my cock within the warmed, wondrous embrace of her lips. So, she caught me unawares with her next question.

"Do you take steroids? I mean, that would explain a lot of your freakish abilities, and Bubba too, because he just ain't right!"

The rumble of laughter lifting from my chest played new crags on the recently-replaced plaster in the kitchen.

_Well, this wasn't going as planned._

I hemmed and hawed and prevaricated.

And then simply said, "Bella, I know we have to talk. But can we just be normal today? Please?"

She deliberated, and waiting for her answer made my guts hurt thinking she'd just up and walk away. Gamely she announced, "Okay."

"Okay?" I was stunned!

"Yes, Eddie. So, what do normal couples do?"

I smelled her noxious meal heating up, "Eat!"

Bella sat at the table while I served her, watching my every move, inflaming seething lust inside of me.

I lowered myself into the chair opposite her.

"But you're not eating," Bella accused, waving her fork forebodingly at me.

"I'm not normal."

"But you just said-"

"Bella-"

"Come to think of it, I've never seen you eat."

"Maybe I have issues with eating in front of other people?" Or eating other people, to be precise.

"Oh, you expect me to think you're anorexic or something?"

"Bella, _please,_" I rasped my hands over my face and scrubbed as if there was stubble growing there, suddenly insufferably tired.

I just wanted to pretend for one day; _hell who was I kidding?_ I wanted to pretend forever, but that clearly wasn't going to fly. I just craved banality, to be the boy next door instead of the bloodsucking ghoul next door, because I didn't know what was going to happen when I told Bella the truth.

Bella dropped her fork with a clatter to the plate. "Eddie, it's okay. _I'll wait_."

Shirking off the dread march of what was to come, I concentrated on now. "Thank you, love."

Newly ravenous, Bella ate with gusto! The vision of her lips wrapping around the tines of the cutlery clawed into my crotch.

Washing down her first few bites with a drink, Bella hiccupped and cajoled, "Now, I know you didn't make this because it has Mama written all over it."

I shrugged and remained bashfully silent, enjoying the show.

After she'd cleared the hearty portion, Bella scraped the chair back and pelted out a satiated breath, "That was delicious, thank you."

Placing a dainty saucer in front of her, I stood waiting for Bella to try my offering.

They could have tasted like petrified lumps of dog turd for all I knew, so I was highly interested in her reaction.

It didn't take long.

Just that first bite had her coughing and spitting meaty lumps of pastry unceremoniously back out onto the plate. Between coughs and clearing her throat and gulping sweet tea, Bella sputtered, "Oh, you definitely made this, didn't you!"

_Oops._

"Are you trying to kill me or something?" I stuttered….I mean, _yes_, _that_ idea had some merit, but I thought I'd followed Paula Dean's instructions to the letter. Apparently not.

"Oh my hell, Eddie, those taste like dog balls!" I opened my mouth to quip and was smacked down before I could even start in on super-mutt Jacob, "Don't even go there." She held up a finger. The one I needed to reach into my jeans and swizzle across the top of my dick for the venom-cum that bled there.

Against her fingers, I managed, "I can think of something that would taste a hell of a lot better."

"You're not wrong," Bella agreed, standing up and leaning over the table to me.

My eyes about fell onto the floor.

Then she grinned.

_And _winked.

The Bella grin-wink combo plus, "Get those fine lips over here," killed me.

_Well, alrighty then. _I fucking loved it when she was all bossy.

We ended up in my bedroom. And I wondered anew why the piano was such a turn-on.

Bella made straight for it, lifting herself to the top.

"Play me something," she requested.

I declined because I had never played for a woman before, and certainly not one who meant as much to me as Bella did.

"Aw, c'mon, Eddie. I'll sing," Bella opened her legs just a bit and pulsed on the keys with her heels.

Well, when she asked like that, who was I to say no? "You choose."

I sat on the bench and she straddled the top in front of my face, bending over to whisper:

_There is no doubt you're in my heart now  
Said woman take it slow  
It'll work itself out fine  
All we need is just a little patience  
Said sugar make it slow  
And we'll come together fine  
All we need is just a little patience_

That just did me in. I tuned the piano, pressed the pedals and ran my limber fingers up and down the keys.

I whistled into her thigh, and she hummed down low against my neck.

The song was sexy because of the way Bella sang it, a living sculpture of Aphrodite atop my upright piano. Throaty, growly, honey and husky, she looked into my eyes the entire time, and I blew across the notes and grunted with each stanza she delivered.

_Patience._

It was perfect.

The song closed with our duet; her midtone to my baritone and the piano was softly soprano and sensual. She slid from casing to keys to my lap and I held her close.

She licked the lobe of my ear and sucked it inside of her incinerating mouth, "You know, Axl Rose is an anagram for _oral sex_."

_Hell yes!_

I gyrated into Bella and let loose her hair so it brushed in chestnut strands over the cold glide stroke of the piano.

"_Fuck_, Bella! I want nothing more than to make love to you, but…_Jesus Christ!_"

She swiveled thrice while I held her ass close before she untangled those goddamn resplendent legs and lifted off of me with a shaky laugh, "Oh no, _baby_, I ain't offering. This is neither the time nor the place and this damn piano is mighty uncomfortable. _Those_ are not the type of bruises I want."

She strolled behind me while I sat motionless and wanting, "_No_, you're not getting near this," she pressed her hips into my back and pushed her tits to my clavicle, "today."

_The hell I wasn't!_

I stood to my full height and observed the ever-growing brown dilation of Bella's eyes. Kicking the bench to the far wall, I rounded on her, "Oh, I'm not?" She backtracked and turned away until I grabbed her wrist and spun her to me, "I'm not going to touch your _sweet pussy_ tonight?"

Towering over her, I towed her to me. I brought her hips to my cock and lunged twice to her quickening breaths.

I let her go and watched with a predatory glint as Bella fumbled and then shook the mane of her hair back, jutted her pointy chin and challenged me mutely.

Looking aside, biting the smile that grew at her reaction, I slowly pulled up my t-shirt, making sure to flex each muscle that came into view.

Cocking my head to the side, I scratched my jaw and ran the fingers of both hands up through the mussy devilish tarnished copper of my hair.

"You're looking a bit flustered, Bella."

I kicked off my boots, unrolled my socks, and unleashed the top two prestids of my button flies. Spreading my fingers wide, I ran my hand over the flat muscles and dents of flesh peering out, pushing the fly open just that little bit more.

Bella moaned and looked from my hands, that were almost to my dick, and then up to my eyes. Hers were heavy and heated.

My jeans were old and comfortable and worried and frayed, especially around my cock and ass. The faded indigo shifted lower on my lean hips, revealing the wiry trail that bloomed and made a straight line to my hard-on.

Her heartbeat sped to a new rhythm, her eyelashes fluttered, and that simple, sexy sundress moved like paper against a hot summer's afternoon breeze.

Closer still, I stalked.

"I don't have to touch you, Bella, to make you cum."

She gulped and her legs opened unconsciously. Her hands unclasped to gather her skirt, lifting it higher.

I had her backed to the wall of my bedroom. Scant space stood between us, charged like heat lightning with pink and white and hard and heat across cumulus clouds and dark night.

Reaching for her, but not touching, I husked, "Do you have any idea how agonizingly difficult it was for me to do no more than cuddle you last night?"

I bracketed her head with my arms, but never once touched.

"Fucking gorgeous. Your beautiful ass," I met the air above those joined curves.

Bella struggled to stand.

"Your luscious tits," I lowered my mouth as if to lick, but stayed a millimeter away.

"Your neck and elbows," I sucked and blew air up and down her throat and then the blue-veined, white skin inside her arm.

Bella groaned and tried to grab me to her.

"Uh, uh, uh. _No touching_, remember?"

"_Fuck!_ Eddie," Bella knocked my CDs off the shelf, and then curved her fingers into balls around her hair.

I smiled, because this was what I was good at and never more so than with Bella, "You _will_ beg me to touch you."

I knelt. Obsequious. "Your ankles." I breathed across the tender skin and looked up at Bella.

"Your knees." I held my hands away and let just the shimmer of my stroke slide against the backside softest skin there. Bella yelped, swayed and backed more fully to the wall.

Her entire body shivered with the idea of my contact, the idea and essence of my touch, the erotic tension of my near-misses had her shuddering.

Opening my jeans wider, I brought her hands inside the V of denim and to the arrow of rigid sinew within. "Yes, you will touch me, Bella. You're sorely mistaken if you thought I wouldn't extract payment in kind for the food."

I saw the wicked grin forming, and knew her next words would be an insult to my cupcakes so I silenced her with the ghost of my mouth over her nipples.

"You sure you don't want to rethink that _no touching_ thing, Bella?"

"_Dammit!_" Bella wrestled me into her, shoved her hands down to my dick until I bent my knees and hissed in and out of her fast clasp.

"_Oh yes!_" I threaded my fingers into her panties and pulled them away from her cunt.

Her hands on me were ludicrously fiery. Each tap to my veins, every rub of the soft, crepe flesh right beneath the head of my cock, all the flicks into the tiny opening slit lips on the middle of my head made me bend back, thrust harder, hurt more, and want nothing more than to cum in her grasp!

I knuckled her clit and then swirled like a soft brush around the edges. Pulsing my thumb over it and taking one, then two, strong, straight fingers along the lips of her cunt, teasing the pink, testing her reactions, watching the flutter of feeling wash over her face and the flitter of her tongue making puffy juice of her lips.

Inside, she was just as tight, sticky-wet, hard-soft as I remembered.

"_Fuck,_ you've got great fingers, Eddie!" Bella blew out across my forehead because I was hunkered low, nibbling her tits, watching her hands grinding my cock that thrived and hardened and turned many saturated shades of whiteand purplish red.

Sweat gathered so moist and stuck us together against the wall of my bedroom and all else was forgotten. I reached deep and each lunge made Bella hiss and hitch her thigh higher onto my hip.

I moaned into the low pocket, the undersides of her breasts when she spread my venom all up and down my shaft.

Beating into her stomach, prodding out of her hands, leaking toxin, taking her pussy in hand, cupping it, loving it, circling and fucking it, _faster-harder-faster_, wet sweat slapped and we both braced into and against each other as breaths stopped on moans that ate through air and replenished oxygen.

Time stop, still flash.

We arced and ached into each other and every single bit of white hot, cold steel, wet snatch, wild cock held for just one, soft, inflexible, out-of-time instant.

"Oh god, _Bella_." I rained over her, and there was so much more I needed to say, but she was relaxed, supine, barely standing, and Charlie expected her home.

In the bathroom I'd hardly used, I waited for the faucet to give warm water. Naked, I saw myself as a new man in the mirror.

Soaping a washcloth, I returned to Bella; she had lain down across my bed, as small as her own, with no heed to modesty.

Running the terrycloth gently against her, I smiled when she twitched and sifted to the side.

"Bella, I want you to stay." I huddled against her and wound my fingers into every bit of skin I could find. "But the Sheriff wouldn't be too thrilled about that."

She snuffled and shuffled and sat up. The vision of her back, bare, beautiful, naked, achingly fragile, found me pressed fully against her. My thighs surrounded hers. My torso melted to her spine. My hands gathered her by her tits to me. _My lips lingered at her cheek._

She dressed with my help. I straightened her clothes and brushed her hair with fingers more tactile than a sable brush. Her scent impregnated me.

Walking Bella to her truck, I promised to stay put tonight.

Kissing her like a lover, I lifted her into the cab and shut her door.

With the window wound down, I asked, "Please ring me when you get home. So I know you're safe."

She ran her fingers over my lips and agreed silently.

"And, Bella…can I call on you tomorrow?"

I was already ten thousand shades of lonely about the ceaseless night ahead.

She sat back and started the rusted-out engine with a roar of fumes, "Can't. I'm target practicing with Rose. Wanna' come?"

Bella plus a shooting range _and a gun_?

_Fuck me._

Wild horses couldn't keep me away.

* * *

**~~Let me know what you think!~~**

This is easily my fave bit because I get to thank y'all for reading, reviewing, alerting and faving! And that makes me so fucking happy. Huge cheers to all of you that have been reading _and_ reviewing every damn chapter! You make me want to write more.

Okay, serious moment, have you heard about **Twilight Fandom Gives Back****: www(DOT)alexslemonade(DOT)org/stands/19842**

"_Did you know that every year over 200,000 children worldwide are diagnosed with a form of childhood cancer? We cannot ignore this shocking statistic impacting the youth of the world, and we certainly hope that you won't either. We need your help._

_Starting Nov. 15 through Nov. 20th, the fandom will have the opportunity to help in the fight against childhood cancer. We haven't set a monetary goal, because we're firm in the belief that no matter what we set, you as a fandom will surpass it._"

This is dear to my heart as I worked quite closely with children with cancer and their families prior to starting my own family.

**So, I am auctioning myself off:**

I will write a minimum 4000 word piece of ONE of the following: an original one-shot of your choosing with any pairing (Slash you ask? Why the hell not!), a Dead Confederates outtake (obviously no fucking between Rebelward and ReBella as they ain't done the deed yet in the story), the continuation of one of my Men of Twilight Prompts (not including Mirror, Crave, or anything Pedanticward related) OR an Incarcerated outtake.

**www(DOT)thefandomgivesback(DOT)****com/**

Direct links, etc. are on my profile.

If you have some money that Cackling Alice didn't manage to snag from your sofa cushions...you know what to do. Bidding from Nov. 15th – 20th.

_**~~ll~~**_

There's a wicked thing that blondie and I wrote under the pen name **Sinister Sisterhood** for **Les Femmes Noires **competition. Our dementedly delicious tale is called **The Bride of Edward Cullen.** Voting starts around Nov. 30th – Dec. 10th. All links on my profile.

_**~~ll~~**_

Thanks for hanging in there; I have about eleven more prompts to write for the **Twilight 25 challenge – **_**The Men of Twilight**_ before Dec. 1st. So please bear with me, or even read and review them, there's something for everyone.

_**~~ll~~**_

The next **Rebelward Without a Cause** update will likely be Bella, written by me! Please do alert.


	13. Part One: Light Artillery

So, it takes a village to raise Eddie. Me too! Welcome Viola Cornuta to the team, you know her from my _Men of Twilight._ And _hellooooo_ V! We've missed you. Eddie wants to know if you're wearing heels and sexy stockings for his comeback?

Disclaimer: The boys, the South, mine. Silver Volvos and nose bridge pinching (okay, and a highly addictive story), SM's.

Thanks **slobber-monkey** for your shooting range expertise as well as your fucking excellent gun talk! Cheers, **Tracey**, for watching the CW late enough to take notes on the ATP commercials, **Jaspersbrand** for the snake shit and **blondie aka robin and Gasaway Alley **for their church signs too!

Rie: And now a word from your sponsor, or Eddie…_fuck, Eddie!_ I was writing your intro. You know I work hard and gruel over-"

Eddie_: Ladies, Eddie here. My profuse apologies for the _long_ wait. I think I've got Rie in hand now; the disobedience has been fucked out of her. She was begging, but not for me to stop, know what I mean? Now, now, just because I'm addressing y'all directly doesn't mean you have to start squirming in your chairs, perhaps save it until you start reading? Shall we?_

~~Really fucking sorry about the lag between updates, but I have a good excuse! Twenty-four epic oneshots (and one drabble) in three months…completed!~~

* * *

**Part One: Light Artillery**

I was laid out on my bed, listening to a little G 'n' R and remembering the feel of Bella's hot, wet flesh smoothing over my fingers, languidly stroking my cock when the phone rang twenty minutes later. Jumping up, I ran to the kitchen, yanked the landline off the wall and pulled its lax cord back to my room, almost fumbling the phone in my haste to hear her voice again.

Her name was a ragged exhalation when I answered, "Bella. Hi, love."

There was a crackle and a throaty laugh, "What if it's not Bella?"

The smile that spilled over my lips held her name in supplication again, "Bella, then I guess I'd be fucked. You made it home in one piece?"

"Mmm, yes, thank you, Eddie."

"For what?"

"For asking. And for feeding me. _And for making me feel amazing,_" Her voice lowered to a sensual breeze, my dick heightened to an excited pole.

"My pleasure, darlin'," I stroked my erection again, just a couple times. It was fucking inevitable.

Her voice brightened back to its usual mellifluous clarity, "So, what are you doing now?"

I turned up the stereo and forwarded to _Patience_, "Listening to some music, thinking of you."

"Guns N' Roses?"

"Mmm, hmmm." I made another pass over my dick and started to unbutton the fly I'd done up when the phone rang.

"What are you wearing?"

"Oh, Bella, Bella, Bella," I chuckled, closing my eyes with longing to suck her tits and run both my big hands down her bare back to her fantastic ass, "What was it you said earlier?" She caught her breath and waited. "_Ah yes,_ _you're not getting near this…tonight._ I'm not phone-sexing you, Bella."

She made a low growling noise into the receiver then silenced with my next declaration, "At least, not until I get the chance to make love to you."

I heard her draw breath, and I was tense as a polecat, sitting up against the wall, my stomach clenched, my cock turgid. As though she were in the same room, sexual tension thickened between us.

Bella laughed, "Aw, c'mon, handsome! You know you're going to beat off anyway."

My ears burned and my masturbatin' hand clawed! She wasn't wrong. Several of Bubba's Kama Sutra whittlings mocked me in their erotic poses from my bookshelf: The Side Saddle – _Bella's long legs to the side of me as she mounted my shaft and gripped my balls like a pommel _– and my personal favorite, The Plow -- _ John Deere move over, I wanted to cultivate Bella's furrowed lips._ My cock was tall and throbbing just thinking about Bella under me and over me, not that I needed anything more exotic than straight-up missionary position. It would do me just fine; hearing her smooth, husky voice at the end of a night, knowing that she was my girlfriend and perhaps would even be my lover soon gave me a hard-on to rival the morning wood I'd woken up with in her bed thirteen hours ago!

"And what about you, Bella? You gonna' get yourself off tonight?" Fuck. If she was, I wanted to hear it if I couldn't see it!

She inhaled and whispered, "No, Eddie, you saw to me right proper. I'm thoroughly satisfied."

_Holy Shit!_

I wished I could say the same.

"That's what I like to hear," the camber of my mouth was evident in my voice. "Go to sleep, love. You've got some shootin' to do tomorrow."

"Yes, I most certainly do," She answered. Why did I suddenly fear for my sanity and my cock? The woman was too fucking sexy for her own good.

"Until the morning, love," I bit down harshly on my tongue from any further foreign words that wanted to escape.

"Sleep tight, Eddie."

_If only I could._

Hanging up the phone, I rolled over to my side and wrapped the blankets around myself, kicking off my jeans and boots and socks. I peeled my t-shirt over my head and balled it under my head, clinging to the scent of Bella permeating the cotton from our earlier embraces.

How downright weird. Her timeline had become mine so quickly. Because she was going to sleep, I billeted down too. Going to bed at a normal hour -- _hell, going to bed at all! –_ was insane! But it made me feel oneness with Bella.

Closing my eyes, I spent the night reminiscing every moment I'd been in her presence, smiling all the while.

_~~ll~~_

Thank fuck Junior and his milk-toast match girl were still holed up in the Bat Cave the next morning when I walked, distinctly bleary-eyed, to the front room of the DW. I'd have loved Jazz's company on our foray, but no friggin' way could I handle a day in Alice's company.

Not when I had to deal with Em in his current state of pseudo-malaise.

_What. The. Fuck._

Beneath the mangy spread again, this time with a box of tissues, several crumpled and littering the floor below as if he'd actually blown his nose, a bottle of Nyquil, near drained and pushed between the cushions raped of coinage by the light-fingered-lilliput, Bubba was lookin' like death warmed over.

"What the fuck are you doing now?"

Scratching his head, Bubba hocked some and mumbled, "I dunno, think I have a cold or something. Maybe allergies…my throat's itchy, my eyes are runny. You didn't happen to catch the Pollen Forecast on the news this morning, did you?"

Fucking perfect. I ran my hand over his clammy -- _obviously because the asshole was dead _– forehead and looked worried. "Shee-it, Bubba! Been to The Pig recently?"

He hurriedly nodded, a pained, worried expression on his husky face.

"Fuck!" I spat.

He cringed, "What is it, Eddie? What's wrong with me?"

"Jesus, man. H1N1! You been to the slaughterhouse, dude. Swine flu ring a bell?" I paced to and fro in front of the sofa. Friggin' Swine Flu. More American fear mongering against an artificial threat when the fuckers should've learned by now there were _real monsters_ walking among them! _Pussies._

Bubba leapt up and then fell back, ever the melodramatic. "Oh shit, Eddie! Am I dying?"

I chortled with my hands to my hips and my head back, "You fuckin' idiot! Number one: you're already dead. Number two: Get this through your thick skull, _you cannot get sick!"_

I tore off the chenille throw and punched him several times in rapid succession in his immovable gut, hoping to pound the fake irritable bowel syndrome right out of him, "Fuck's sake, are you a fudge packer or what? Grow a pair already. Just because you ate pizza, got constipated, and _thought_ you had to take a dump doesn't mean you're suddenly susceptible to human ailments, dicktard." _Fuckin' Bubba: World's First Hypochondriacal Vampire._ Guinness Book of World Records would be knocking on our door soon at this rate.

He wheedled and huddled back into the sloppy couch, "Yeah, but I really feel like shit, man."

Snatching the Kleenex, because that shit needed to be preserved for better use, _like my jizz_, the cough syrup that was about 99% proof and possibly more inebriating than moonshine, I threw a final hammer blow to his chest. "Hear this, fuckface…_scratchy throat?_ When was the last time you fed, asshole? And teary eyes? Well, you're sitting on the couch exactly where you farted, and we still haven't Febrezed as Maw told us to. Sulfurous fumes like your epic flatulence would cause anyone's eyes to well up!"

Reinvigorated, Em sat up and grinned, "What can I say, bro? I'm _sick._"

He twirled the cap off the NyQuil and took a long pull before offering it to me, "Try it, it's good shit."

Swilling it around the bottle, looking at the thick green absinthe-like slosh, thinking of the batshit-crazy, green faerie just fifty yards away, I tugged on the bottle top. _Yeah, why hadn't we thought of this before?_ More potent than cheap hooch, medicinal, molasses-like and sugary? Definitely good for a cheap, quick buzz.

Half cocked and fully loaded, I asked, "So, feeling good enough to hit the firing range with Rose and Bella or what?"

"If I've said it once, I'll say it again, bro. Is a pig's pussy pork?"

Bubba and I drove to the bluff to raid Carl's store-bought food supplies for targets. Seamlessly segueing from her rant about her new warsher-dryer set -- _ I don't know what the machine's tellin' me; it's always beeping at me –_ to muttered grumbles about Carl's stash – _Damn nuisance…stench of cigar stubs, bull bullock, and formaldehyde...junk food! Ruining my chances at a spread in Charleston Home magazine_ – M'Esme was our willing accomplice as we tore apart the pantry.

Winking at me, Bubba pocketed two boxes of Ziploc baggies for no other reason than to piss Esme off.

There was a low rumble on the dirt road as Rose's red El Camino came down the shaded alley towards us.

I ambled to Bella's side. Attemptin' nonchalance, I opened her door. Watching her body unfold from the interior, I followed her feet in tough boots that laced up her calves over dark jeans so tight they showed every line of her curvaceous legs, to her rack swaying beneath the tiniest fucking tank top ever made, soft, dark gray with the Guns N' Roses emblem like a ribbon right fucking across her tits! Motherfuckin' sexy scraps of black lace ran across the top and edged thin straps I wanted to snap off. It was pretty fucking apparent she wasn't wearing a bra because her nipples were high and tight and proud underneath the 'U' and the 'E', and the 'N' housed right into her cleavage.

I stopped breathing.

Bella stared up at me, glitter in her eyes.

I could smell the summer warmth of her skin.

She looked down to the rigid cylinder my cock was making in my pants.

I started to breath in deep ragged pants.

"Trying to kill me, are you?" I was boning so hard _I_ might as well be wearing white lycra cycle shorts, forget Axl Rose.

She stood on the tips of her toes and ran her hands to the back of my neck, "Hmmm, I don't know about _that_, Eddie. Why, see something you approve of? You seemed to like my," She paused and tickled my lips with the point of her tongue, "_guns_ and _rose_ last night."

Slanting her head, I grabbed her rear and ran my tongue against hers, my mouth sealing our wet, deep kiss. Bella's boobs, unbound, sank against my chest, and her hands gripped my midsection, one on top of my flannel and the other caressing my abs underneath.

"Fuck me." I shook my head to clear it of the pluff, mud-like arousal making it swim. Grinning, I squeezed her ass and then rubbed it.

Standing back, Bella wondered, "Where are Jazz and Alice?"

_Huh? Had she said something?_ All I could think was Bella in that fragment of a tank top. I mean, really, could that fucking thing even be called a top? And what were those things called? _Yeah, fuckin' spaghetti straps. _The black details, slim and fine, sat just inside her round shoulders over the skin I wanted to attach my mouth to. I could shred that fragile fabric with my teeth in an instant and pluck her flesh into my mouth….

Bubba interrupted my hot musings, "Junior and Pint-sized? Sounded like they were knocking through some walls when we left the trailer park."

Turning to Em, Bella frowned, "Come again?"

I stepped in, "Renovatin's what he meant."

Rose stood next to Bella, "Putting an addition on their bat cave, Eddie?"

Smartass! Could everyone read fucking minds nowadays?

"Shame. I'd like to get to know Alice a bit more."

_The fuck you say! _ I sourly hashed out too low for Bella to hear, "Over my dead body." _Goddamnit, I really needed to cut that shit out!_ But there was no way she was going to befriend the guano gamboler.

I was even more perturbed with Rose's insistence they were going to drive up to the range together, _alone_. What the hell? Like the human tradition of girls holding hands to take a slash.

"Well, y'all insinuated yourselves on our day out so-"

"Christ, woman, it's when you speak them big words you make me all kinds of horny for a nice, wet, blow-"

"Shut it, Emmett. If you weren't so damn sexy I wouldn't think twice about runnin' you over."

The ape just grinned as if his life weren't really in danger by his vampire girlfriend.

I bit back my own displeasure, and watched Bella observing the two haggling like an old married couple with a small smile on her lips.

Situating Bella back in the Camino, I leaned down for a parting kiss and asked, "You got your own gun, baby?"

Bella pointed to the case at her feet, "Oh yeah! I bought it during the tax-free weekend!"

God Bless South Cackalackee! The only state in the union with a Revenoor Man holiday for fire arms. _Damn I loved this place._

I kept on their tail the entire way up 95. Rose insisted on the ATP Gunshop & Range way the hell up in Turkey Pond, past our local weatherman's favorite little town, Cat Hole, because they hosted a bimonthly Ladies' Night. Who knew she was such a women's libber? Now, bra burning? That's something even I could get behind, especially with my mind still full of Bella's unfettered hush puppies.

Just past the Highway 17C Junkyard -- a huge billboard touting a gap-toothed, mullet-haired kid enthusing, "My momma says _turn your trash into cash._" – the rural church signs got interesting. First up was: _We may not be Dairy Queen, but we still have great Sundays._

_Midnight Mass and Toga Party: B.Y.O.B.J. (Bring your own Baby Jesus)_ was just half a mile down the road!

My cheeks hurt from laughing, and Em pulled out yet another cunt-ass Fart Boy so he could jeer with us at the insanity of country Christianity.

I bet God wasn't amused.

Up ahead I took in Rose's ride. She kept it in excellent condition, and true to feminist form the only decal she had was a white outline of an eight-point stag head circled by the words: _Girls do it better._

We'd fuckin' see about that!

They were probably in the El Camino comparing cock size or something. I wasn't worried in that regard, but my ears were burning.

I pulled up next to them at the only stoplight between here and Timbuktu. Looking at Bella, I reached my hand across the tarmac until she locked her fingers inside of mine, the heat and sensuality exploding through me from that small touch. I gunned the engine like I was jerking my own dick.

Grinning, Bella called, "Is that your redneck mating call?"

With sparkling umber eyes, she met my tawny, hooded gaze and strolled her fingers up over my wrist and, _By God!_ I wanted her!

My smile broadened, and I revved even harder.

Flirting felt good.

Like smoky whiskey in a crystal tumbler, Bella's giggle opened into words, "Jesus, baby, why don't you just piss on me already?"

Now that sounded like a good idea; if only something as simple as taking a leak was an option, I'd definitely mark my woman with my scent.

Further up the road we passed a dawdling F150 whose back windows screamed ain't-never-been-south-of-the-Mason Dixon with its matching bookend, buxom mudflap honeys in silhouette in the two side windows and the Virgin Mary in the center.

_Praise be and pull up a pew, y'all._

Bubba took a square blue packet from his pocket and tore off the top.

_Oh my fucking god._

He shook the entire powdery contents of the Goody's Headache Powders package into his mouth, ran his finger inside the foil to collect any residue and pinched it between his cheek and gum like it was chaw, rubbed it to his gums like cocaine.

I just shook my head.

"What? I have a headache. Anyway, shit's endorsed by Richard Petty, and everyone knows _Everything's faster in Goody Country."_

On up Hungryneck Boulevard, always good to tickle the vampire funny bone, and finally to Rifle Range Road, the creativity of these sentient beings never ceased to amaze me, we eventually pulled into the ATP parking lot.

Thank Christ, or whoever, Bella had pulled a long sleeve tee over her tank top, because for fucking certain if she hadn't I'd be hard pressed to keep my hands on my gun instead of her tits.

Ladies' Night signs were littered all around the early summer's drought, dead yellow patches of grass. _C'mon and shoot like a girl! Ladies, empower yourselves! Tired of that skillet, tied down to the oven range…check out our _shootin'_ range and bring your own _skillet_!_

Between bringin' my own baby Jesus and skillet, I knew we were in the heart of the rebel territory.

We approached the counter to pay for our privileges, and a squat, middle-aged man with beady termite eyes introduced himself, "How do, folks. I'm John James. What can I do for y'all?"

Bubba kicked my foot and mouthed, _"John James? James John?"_

Fuck it, another rustic cuntnundrum, and he was heretofore known as John-James-John, oh how I loved a good hick palindrome.

The fairer sex was half price of course, this equality shit just got more and more confusing! I hoped to hell this outing didn't turn into another Gerald's Tires fiasco with a poofter's rose inside the girls' car when we left.

True to form, John-James-John could hardly take his eyes off our women. Nodding his head to Rose, he asked in a wheedling tone, "And who's this purty young lady?"

Rose bristled, I was just glad he'd set his dung-like sights on her instead of Bella. Bubba, of course, was undisturbed, "This here is Rose. But I just call her ma'am."

I curled Bella closer to my side and hid my smirk against her ear, taking in the fire of her blood flushing her skin, enjoying the race of her heart, the silence of her thoughts to me, and her shifting hips undulating more fully into my hands.

"Well, nice to meet you Miss..._ma'am?_" J-J-J faltered for a moment before gathering his salesman's steam, "We got layaway here, y'all, if yer lookin' to buy somethin' too."

_Layaway. Thrifty Jizzper would approve._

We just shook our heads and made for the back door.

He called out, "Need some targets?"

I lifted the canvas bag at my side, "Naw. Thanks. Brought our own."

Ushering Bella from the store front with its endless racks of light artillery, ammo, assault rifles and every weapon imaginable, we were greeted by the radio crackling: _Come on down to ATP for all your feminine firepower needs._ "Fucking hell, they're really _gunnin'_ for the female clientele," I exclaimed, holding the door open for Bella to the outdoor shooting range.

Bella clasped my arm, running torrid helix lines of pleasure through my body, making my groin bulge with a fresh shot of venom. The uncomfortable problem compounded when she tugged me down to her lips to let me know, "I like your new bumper sticker, Eddie."

Oh yes, _I'd rather be cummin' than strokin'._ "Do you now?" I hauled her closer, draping my arm around her shoulders, my fingers dangling dangerously near the warm nubbins of her nipples.

"Mmm hmm, me too," She winked and hooked two fingers into my front belt loops, turning me to her. _Fuck! How did she always manage to get the upper hand?_

I wound our fingers together, mine away from her tits and hers away from my painful erection, "Yeah? Well, I like your tailgate, Bella." I leered as she chuckled, and led her to our shelter.

I peered at Bella pulling out her weapon of choice. A nice 9mm Glock with a twenty shot clip. The perfect choice with its small, sleek body and loud burst. She watched me setting out the targets.

Starting big, I sat a brace of Coke two liters on the platforms.

Bubba caressed his AK-47. He liked to spray a shit-ton of bullets, causing as much damage as he could. Smiling at her firearm, Rose shouldered her long-distance, highly accurate 6mm Remington Ackley...the lethal piece could destroy a small creature at half a mile easily. Catching my surprise, she shrugged and stated, "It's like AT&T, Eddie. Good for when you want to _reach out and touch someone_!" Bubba was agog, thinking, _Shit, that is one sexy gun!_

Bella stopped her loading to watch me unzip my pouch. Her eyes dropped to my other pouch before returning to my hands lifting my classic Winchester .30-30 rifle out of the bag. Of polished wood and slim metal stock, the rifle was created thirty-two years after Jasper's becoming a vampire. I loved the bitch, and it went without sayin' I didn't need a scope or a stand to cause some deadly harm.

Up first, Bella put on a pair of sunset pink safety glasses that were hot as hell and resembled aviators more'n anything, and pushed her plugs into her ears.

I cradled my Winchester, desperately needing to relieve another weapon of a few thousand rounds, and observed her excellent stance.

Handling the heft of her weapon with a firm grip, one I'd felt all over my cock pulling me into orgasm, Bella stood with her legs apart like she would if I was muff diving between her thighs. In concentration, the tip of her deliriously pink tongue protruded as if it knew my tumescent shaft was threatening to do the same from the stricture of my button flies. Holding her right hand steady with her left hand to the underside of her forearm, a place I'd nipped and licked and tickled, Bella pulled the trigger. A slight recoil bounced her body, making her tits jiggle fucking beautifully. I figured the trajectory and shouldn't have been one bit awed when her shot hit the bottle with total precision, causing a whizzing explosion that threw plastic and foaming brown pop up into spirals like Old Faithful!

"_Goddamn," _I muttered.

Bella placed her safety on and walked to me, "Sweetheart, isn't shootin' every Southern girl's rite of passage?" She laid her hand over mine, atop my gun – though not the one that craved her touch – and kissed the crest of my cheek.

No doubt she'd gotten her acumen from Sheriff Shylock. He'd definitely done one thing right with her.

The blown-up heap of the two liter smacked the ground like a mangled cadaver, and my dick stood even more at attention with her outstanding marksmanship.

Hell, I was tempted to pick her up some lessons in gunsmithing at this rate! Screw the taxidermy. Well, there was always graduation coming up.

Bubba took point next. Rose was stretching her arms above her head, working her muscles and other bits when Bubs looked over from loading, managing to jam his thumb into the chamber. Bella tried to cover her mouth over an eruption of laughter, but failed to withhold her comment, "Still struggling with that opposable thumb thing, huh?"

I laughed so hard I coulda' pissed myself and joined in at Em's expense, "No shit. Survival of the fittest? Darwin got it bass ackwards with Bubba!"

Retaliating, Bubba tore through the remaining three bottles, a spray of ammo and rat-a-tatting shell shot and bursting effervescent soda showering the range in front of us.

Returning to the lean-to, Bubba gave Rose a searing kiss and an ass-squeeze, "Don't be sore I shot up the last of the pop, gorgeous. I brought a skillet for you!"

"Em, I swear to God, you're dead meat!" Rose stormed.

"Did someone say _dead meat_?" Bubba grabbed his crotch and waggled his eyebrows.

Bella joined the fray, "Jesus, Rose, did you catch James-John-James checking you out?"

"Christ, yes. Redneck needed a bib to catch his drool. Like I'd touch _that_ with my ammo, let alone my tits."

"Well, you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're pokin' the fire," I managed to spit out, and the freedom of our laughter rang louder than buckshot.

On Rose's turn, sure shootin', she hit the bull's-eye dead-center, and then proceeded to tear the pan a new asshole in exactly the same spot with ten more rapid shots.

I put out the next targets; Carl's bags of potato chips.

Feeling Bella's eyes examining my carriage, her look alone brushed a shivery current of longing up and down the steel of my nerves, and the quake that shook me had nothing to do with the thrill of my rifle cozied against my cheek.

Blasting the ballast of two cans of Pringles, first lobbing off the top and then smattering them in the middle so fractions of chips shattered the air like the fire from my Winchester, I heard Bubba over the echo of din flattening to the ground like crumbs, "Yeehaw, boss! _Once you pop you cain't stop!_"

I locked my weapon as he elbowed me, motioning to Bella so all I could think of _a-fuckin'-gain_ was getting inside her pants, popping open her fly, and finally friggin' finding out exactly what kind of scanties she was wearing, if any. Because from my inspection, weren't no damn panty-lines to be had.

Bella wrapped her arms around me, sloughing her incising, flaming mouth to the hollow of my throat, letting my cock rest and beat against her tummy. "Eddie, I love a man who can handle his _weapon_."

My groan tumbled out of my throat the same time Rose took out a sack of artificially-dyed junk food. Bubba boomed proudly, "Oh yeah, Cheetos go _crunch_! Paw would be proud," wiping fake tears from beneath his eyes.

"Bella, please love, seeing you fire a pistol, just being here with you…I'm trying so fucking hard to be a gentleman. You know you're killing me with your innuendos."

_Shit, there I go again with the dead talk._ "Let's finish the final round so I can take you home and demonstrate just how fucking much I want you."

Bella strained closer and hooked one leg around mine, trapping me to her scorching body, "Honey, I can feel how much you want me." She stood taller and cantered her pussy against my crotch, "Can you feel me too?"

Grabbing her locks, pushing up her shirt so I could finger the heathery cloth of that teasing tank top underneath, I melted to her mouth in a long, hard, hot kiss. Too quickly, steam plumed between us. Instead of lifting her thigh to my hip, I pushed her away slowly. The breath tangling between us was rabid with muggy want.

My voice was rough as the wiry hair that ran round my dick's base, "Let's finish shootin', love."

The last call was served. I'd skipped out to the Wal-Mart this morning while Em was clearing the rest of his phlegm, _or whatever_, to pick up a few stuffed animals to shoot the shit outta: a raccoon for Rose – having hunted with her a few times, I knew she hated them things somethin' fierce -- Wile E. Coyote for Bella, Yogi the Bear for Bubba, and a wolf for me, of course.

My woman tore a new hole in the coyote, Rose decimated her black-masked coon, Bubba sent fluff flying like cattails to the wind, and I said a silent prayer for Boo-Boo.

Needless to say, Bella was less than happy with my choice of target. She stood apart and glared at me, but I didn't allow her disapproval to sway me from my goal of ripping the skanky lupine to feathers. First I shot out both his eyes. Then I gashed his white-bibbed torso. Finally I sent a bullet straight up his ass.

I'd never felt better.

Working faster than the others, I tucked my rifle away and turned to Bella. Stealing my arms over her hips, I pulled her into me, bent my knees so her ass met my cock and whispered against the faint, loose tendrils of her ponytail, "Don't be sore, love. I'm just a man."

She turned in my embrace. Hands to the sides of my face rasping up and down, "Are you just a man, Eddie?"

The plea in her softened eyes about broke me.

Our closed mouths met, and wetness raced out. I broke away first, "I want to be. For you."

Bubba broke the intensity by announcing his need to hit the head, fuck knows why. Worse yet, I found myself lugging after him. 'Spose because the girls were doing it, lord knows they traveled like pack animals, and it wasn't as if Rose needed a piss any more than we did!

In the can, I stupidly opened a stall. The stench was overwhelmingly putrid. I unhinged the door all the way, taking in all the Bic scrawls through the drab green paint. Until I hit upon one in particular:

_**For a good time call Eddie.**_

Holy shit! And there in Bubba's messy penmanship was the DW phone number: _333-867-2625_!

_What the cunt?_

With two pushes of my thumb, I erased that shit from the squeaky metal. For damn sure I was off the market, never had been on it for tea room trade.

Bubba snuck out the side door with a mumbled, "Fuckin' hungry, braw. Just going after a rattler I saw earlier. Give me ten."

Shit. I wished I could join him in his amphibian rodeo, but I had the chicks to attend to.

We waited.

J-J-J sniveled and slavered some more.

Rose gave him the less nice two fingered salute but sweetened her insult by purchasing an ATP Gunrange t-shirt in vomit-inducing neon pink: _I shoot like a girl._

Flicking through the guest book filled our final minutes:

_The ATP is the most lady-friendly gunshop this side of the __Mason-Dixon line__._

_The Lowcountry is blessed to ATP Gunshop and range, a great place to shop and shoot!_

_Load 'em, cock 'em back. Now, welcome 2 South Cakalina_.

Bubba swiped the cold blood from his mouth and met me at the Bronco.

Again, we followed the El Camino through the back of beyond.

At Boggy Head, Rose swerved to the soft shoulder. She hollered back, "Mud Run?"

_This was what we meant by hitting the bog!_

Em thumped the rooftop, and I roared the engine, spraying up gravel in agreement.

Reaching back, I opened the doors and shouted, "Hop in!"

I tore down a trail that was little more than a walking path. Sagos, live oaks, southern pines, and cedars whipped their branches against the windshield as my tires sank in and out of deep, muddy pools.

The depths of the thick, primordial ooze beckoned at my bumper. At the last moment, Em trounced across me and hit all the buttons, opening the windows to the fountain of foul, plopping mist that splatted around us.

A gorilla standing up on the seat, his upper body out the window, Em beat his jockstar forearms on the roof so I'd have more dents to punch out later.

Sludge sloughed into the cab, and I didn't give a shit really, I could detail the Bronco in half an hour. But I was concerned about Bella's reaction. I needn't have been for she'd fallen in a fit of giggles back into the seat, her and Rose entwined, mire saturating them as we dove hard into ruts and rose upon hills of muck.

Covered in wet, cold dirt, grins plastered to all our faces, I dropped Bella and Rose back roadside.

I ran my fingers through the tacky clots of drying morass over her throat and begged her, "Come back to my house, please."

She said yes, and her jeans were dirt encrusted as she jumped into Rose's truck.

Sooty crisps of dried slush shed off us to the floor mats beneath mine and Bubba's feet. A puritanical, white-steepled church had its billboard at the ready: _Road Rage? How would Jesus drive?_

I snarked, "Well, Hell. He don't drive, motherfucker floats!"

"More to the point, _what_ does JHC drive? Cadillac Coupe de Ville, in white, with fins, braw," Em brayed like a donkey.

Two corners away from Luxury Hollows, we passed God's Little Chapel. Their signage won three points for originality: _Jesus died to reserve "my space" in Heaven. Join Pastor Rodney Keith as he speaks the truth an' light. Cyberspace meets Heaven's gates. _

Rodney-Keith-Rodney took second place to Bella when I backed up to Em's monster truck.

Rose and Bubba left. I had no fucking clue where Rose lived and couldn't have cared less.

Bella looked like Hell. Five steps away from me she stank of gunpowder and was painted with splotches of mud.

She needed a washing.

I'd never wanted her in my arms, arched over my bed, more.

My chin met my chest. My eyes hungered up with starvation. She'd discarded her dirty sleeved shirt. The Guns N' Roses top was soaked, and it sucked to every dip and swell of her body.

I rubbed the heel of my palm against my jaw and padded closer. "I want you now, Bella."

Her heels lifted from the ground, I flicked a scab of dirt from between her thighs.

Dried soil flaked off her wrists around my neck, and I opened my lips over hers, tasting her tongue, planting my sordid mouth in drenched suction to hers.

A hand to my sternum, an unmoving plate of bone, halted me. Between deep pulls of air, Bella lingered over my red, crisp, and yearning lips, "Hey, Eddie?"

I bit down on my bottom lip, attempting to rein in my desire, "Yeah?"

Quickly, Bella wrapped her fingers into my dirty hair, wrenching inflexibly till I met her dilated irises, which were stomped so far down beneath the earth's crust I didn't know which way was up, "_I'd rather be cumming than going_."

A wink tucked down her eyelashes, a lascivious smirk blossomed across her full lips.

_Mother lover!_

_

* * *

  
_

Eddie: You fuckin' seriously leaving me hangin' _there_, Rie?

Rie: Well, it was long…

Eddie: Still is, darlin'. _And_ hard.

Rie: Yes, Eddie, but I was referring to the chapter not your – whatsit Maw calls it? – _lallydoodle._

Eddie: *shrugs*

~~I did my best to make it worth the wait. Now, everyone wants to know: Sexin' before confession? What say you? Oooh, guesses for Eddie's phone number, anybody?~~

**More chapters coming in a faster manner.**

ATP, Ladies Nights, Tax Free SC Guns, etc. it's all true.

The next _**Rebelward Without a Cause**_ is not going to be written by me, and I will not be doing a Bella outtake, at least not until further down the line. Why? There's far too much lovely intrigue going on with her. It's much better this way. _Trust._ Instead, you will be getting a fantastic o/s by my friend **Jaspersbrand** exploring Mama Brown's and Rose's past!

* * *

**Fandom Gives Back totals are over $87,000 right now!**

Huge thanks to the gatekeeper of my sanity and my very good friend BellaStjerne for being my winning bidder. She's rescinded her original request and has given me instead the gift of R&R as well as a wish for me to work on my own writing. Thank you, darling!

_**The Men of Twilight**_ (my series of oneshots for the Twilight Twenty-Five Challenge) is over…ta for the love, and y'all should still read/review/VOTE. All links are on my profile. Alert me for I am posting several of the series I started there (one fucking hilarious, one slash, one beautifully incredible and the fourth more canon, pre-Twilight and then some). There will be more chapters and even some new chapters between those you've already read,

_The Bride of Edward Cullen, Dead Confederates, and Rebelward Without a Cause _are all up for **Shimmer Awards**! Voting will start on December 27th.

Nominate your favorite completed and incomplete fictions for the winter round of the **Eddies and Bellies**: www . thecatt . net/tw/Default . aspx (take out spaces around dots)

**PS. Eddie tweets. You talk dirty to him and he'll quite happily hand it right back. Link on my profile.**

**Rie~**


	14. Part Two: Heavy Petting

Many thanks to **V** and **Vi** for their fantastic help! I love them incredibly and would be a sad-ass basket-case without them.

**Disclaimer: **It's almost Christmas and I own this shit! I just didn't come up with the YA story.

**Rie**: So, the ladies are wondering what you're going to do, Eddie.

**Eddie**: Well, Hell, so am I! Maybe you could clue me the fuck in too.

**Rie**: _Maybe_ you should just sit yerself back on the porch couch and have a read, _ingrate_.

**Eddie**: Yeah, alright. I hope I'm not alone though, who's joining me?

**Rie**: Oh, you need some _ego_ strokin' do ya'?

**Eddie**: *smirks* Somethin' sure needs stroking.

**Rie**: _Right_. You know there's an entire friggin' trailer park of ribald women at your beck and call, Eddie. You know, the Dead Fed gals from the Double Wide thread?

**Eddie**: Fuck yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about! Let's do it then. Just pass me the cooler, I'm fuckin' gasping, and I don't know if you're gonna' let me _quench my thirst._

Some bits from **SueBob**, **Lix**, and probably many more of y'all…thank you! Thank you, **eviekinz, **for finding the lyrics!

* * *

_Heavy Petting, _Dead Confederate

_Heavy petting, come up breathing  
Heavy petting, stand there grieving  
Skin is shedding, blood is letting  
Hands are ready, for heavy petting  
Over and over I'm ashamed  
I'm keeping myself awake  
Over and over I'm a…  
Pushing in it, bound to break it  
I can't wake it, laying naked  
Over and over I'm ashamed  
I'm keeping myself awake  
Over and over I'm a…  
Over and over I'm ashamed  
I like it, like it  
I'm keeping myself awake today  
I have to try…_

**Part Two: Heavy Petting**

I liked bush.

Specifically, I liked Bella's bush.

After standing in the rabbly drive listening to the rumble of Rose's El Camino tear away, hearing her laughter as she veered just off the beaten path to scare a raccoon scavenging the side-of-road refuse and litter left out by Miss Delia's Penkse drivin' deadbeat Texan old man, I gaff rigged Bella to my mainmast shaft by the cushy round hold of her ass and inclined my lips slowly to her, licking up the welling of venom that sat inside my mouth's crease.

Her eyes furled down like a sail from sky to stormy ocean, following my tongue, my mouth, my bladed teeth biting the shank of my lower lip lest I bite her, _too hard_.

Gunsmoke, flush sex, and fresh from Boone Hall strawberries, Bella's womanly scent almost outshined the ranging simmer of her solstice-singing blood.

Bella's bush was topiary of the most erogenous sort. I remembered, I saw again hourly, _probably by the fucking minute_, her beautiful, shell-like lips shimmering under a small topping of goddamn divine curls. The same color as her long, wave-imbued locks, I imagined what I couldn't see. A glint of that color red, lit under light, glinting after sun…dark, ruddy, chestnut pubic hair forming a heart whose tail directed me straight to her clit like a fuckin' hand on a compass pointing true south, an X-marks-the-spot: _Here is the earth's treasure, Eddie._

_Bush trimmin'._

Junior liked his grass cut just so. He was a might bit OCD, truth be told. 'Spose that's what working for Malevolent Maria--the demonic bitch despot--would do to a vampire, what with decades of massacres sweeping from one innocent to the next and then executing each sired and damed victim once they were used up like an empty box of tissues.. Yeah, anal-retentive was what he was. Soft-spoken, tall, blond Longhorn turned mercenary still bore a mighty fucking cross. Cain't say I was all too shocked watchin' him on his John Deere with its revved-up engine block, creating a precise, cross-hatch pattern that a fucking baseball diamond groundskeeper would be envious of.

First time he'd cut grass, Bubba and I'd taken up positions as lawn chair commentators on the verge, with our Styrofoam cooler packed full of brew and blood.

Tanking back a beer, Em craned his head to the side and sat forward, "What the tarnation's that? Ain't abstract-"

I picked dirt from my nails with the key to the Bronco and negligently answered "Geometric."

"Yeah, like a-"

"Chessboard." I pushed the keychain back into my pocket and ripped the top off a liter of blood, careful not to drop one fluid ounce. _Time for dessert._

"Punk, I was gonna' say checkerboard, like they have at Mama Brown's on a Sunday evenin'." _Mensa wannabe, fuckin' oughta go back to Med School and git the hell out of my hair. _

Reaching over, I razzed Bubba with the bruising crush of my knuckles, still tripping back the liquid shake that looked like no more than gray-matter to me. Taking a slurp and lettin' out a satisfying iron burp, "Aw, but then you'd miss me, Bubba!"

He knocked my hand away with a blow that would have amputated a lesser man, "_Goddamn,_ boy's concentratin' so hard he's gonna' give himself an aneurysm!"

"Bubba, how many times I gotta' tell you, vampire blood vessels don't hemorrhage. Might could bust a nut though, looks like he wants to make love to that damn tractor, and we know he ain't exactly discriminatin'."

Em reared back and broke his Blue Light Special canvas chair in half at that, but still managed to fist bump me from flat on his ass, "_Nice_."

Jazz alighted like throwing his leg off a well-groomed horse, took a chamois to rub off the smatter flecks of grass and stabled the bitch in his shed.

"9.85 for dismount!" I called out, cupping my hands 'round my mouth to make a megaphone.

"Missed a spot, toffy-pants," Em stood up and walked to the edging stones around Junior's River Oak, pointing to an outcrop of St. Augustine's. With a quick tug on the cord, Jazz came back, his weed whacker throwing out a loud racket and fumes of gasoline, and took another damn hour beating every inch of yard into submission.

_Well-groomed, Bella's lovely little thicket. _

Bubba, well hell, he wasn't anal retentive, but he did have him some tendencies towards imaginary illnesses. Made me do the yardwork whenever the pollen count topped an unsightly 50 plus. Otherwise he was quite happy to tame the straggly weeds we let grow, watching the bastard things encroach ever-closer to Jazz's front twenty. And he liked to tear shit up with no thought to form or design.

Fuckin' skanky coon-skin cap and corncob pipe tilting from his mouth as if he was lolling intellectually in a library -- _a sight no one would ever see_ -- clad in smoking jacket and velvet slippers puffing from a carved pipe! Nah, that would never do Bubba justice. This was his place, his time. Thrusting down the gears, wearing a new ass-print into the leather seat, Bubba was a king on his throne; a monster Kubota tractor. Shirtless and toking a bowl of Jamaica's finest, he yeehawed it up! Strapping lad that he was, Emmett enjoyed nothing more than spoiling donuts into the dusty front turf that was 99% weeds and 1% St. Augustine's, and all fucking pitted and pockmarked by sinkholes. Mud splattered, weeds choked and pelted our windows, a spray of dirt slashed across my Bronco and I simply was not having _that!_ One would have thought he was racing his Monster truck through a primordial bog by the hollering that accompanied the roaring diesel engine shaking the rundown trailers in our 'hood, causing such a racket I heard the umpteen babies next door wake from their naps with squalling cries that pierced my ears and made me thank the devils below, once again, I was physically incapable of hatching spawn!

_Bella._

_Right in front of me. Finally._

I swerved lower and sucked out her nipples, scraping my teeth against the softest cotton and the paste-plastic Guns n' Roses logo. Circular quarters made the gray of her top black over her peaks striving to strip right fuckin' through fabric. Placing my face into her tits again, I nibbled gently through the threads around her right breast, silently tearing the material until a heated bud shouldered out. A lashing of my cool air right on her skin made her look down and clap the pierced fabric back together, honey and swarming and sweltering, Bella berated me, "Oh, you are so paying for that!"

Laughter and lust were backing her voice, and I never wanted to lose that melodious sumptuous sound. Pulling her by her skinny beltloops, I brought her back. Popping the top two buttons of her jeans, I peeled them open over her hips to bare tempting skin, because I fuckin' needed to see her panties after a damn endless day of that illusory shit. Sucking her lips to mine, I lashed inside and out her mouth, and looked down to the unwrapped gift. _Fucking Hell._ All I could make out was sheer. Fucking transparent. Black. Satin at the top. So Christly low on her pubis, with half a finger inside I'd be fingering her pussy.

_Motherfuckme._

A growl clobbered my throat.

I was panting like an animal in mating season, frosty steam rising from my nose and my dick an altimeter in my jeans that were filled so fucking near to bursting!

And her hot human pussy, lustrous pubes and all, was right at my fingertips. Grabbing her hair, rubbing my mouth over the sheared, sweet nipple I'd exposed, I tiptoed down to the splayed flap of her pants. _Bush_. _Bella's Bush._ Tamed and sculpted with much more care than Bubba gave our shit-strewn yard, I felt the whorl of flesh under curls under mesh under my fingertips tripping and teasing softly.

Moaning into her cleavage and making another and another slit in her fucking tormenting tank top, I stuck my tongue into each new hole. _Her body, her pussy, a fucking masterpiece._

A girl-scaped, mapquested destination,– _I ran my hand around to her ass and cupped her hard. Bare fucking rear. A goddamn g-string! --_. Springy. Scrummy -- _Get a grip! _ _Too much fucking Rachel Ray! Way too much Miss Piggy Paula D.! Cooking for a mortal was making me a pussy. Pandering to this human girl's pussy was making me a sissy!_ But Lucifer take me, I didn't give a shit. Not really. Her nether lips, underneath the small cloud of curls, were the softest, smoothest, plumpest, sweetest smile, bare as a baby's bottom. Food Network, Rachel Ray, Bobby Flay, even goddamn blood was the farthest thing from my mind when all I could think about was nibbling the perfectly manicured topi-art that magnetized me to her minge.

I licked the shell-like lips that withheld her from my all-seeing, rendered-honeyed eyes. Opening her up, with glacial fingertips alone so that Bella bucked and beckoned with her hips and mashy, creamy thighs, spreading her lotus petals with the tips of my thumbs while my other digits denied the compulsion to rip into the ligaments that joined pelvis to legs, reaching across to her lissome outer thighs; _that's how I'd had her last night, and how I was going to have her, soon as I could get the filthy fuckin' clothes off her. _All juicy, making a swill of toxin flood my mouth, mouthwatering, Finger Lickin' Original Recipe Colonel Sanders had nothing on this shit! It should be packaged and sold to the highest bidder. 'Cept I'd kill any other motherfucker who came near her, starting with the Malodorous Mutt.

Her clit a deep red, or so I imagined, nestling and hiding, her labia shimmering and slick confederacy, I'd opened her wide. Dove in with my diamond hard tongue and ripped across her clit with my Schick sharp teeth, scouring out every ridge that clenched around my probing entrance.

Fuck! I loved tonguing Bella until she was so wet she dripped all over my face with glossy, aroused paint.

Flaying and flailing!

And here I was, pussy-footing around, like a cat on a hot tin roof; not even able to dream, I was _daydreaming_ about eating Bella out! This shit had to stop.

_Bella. Bella was right fucking here._

She placketed my cock with both her palms and fucking mewled like a cat in heat, just to feel me strong and definite inside my Levis.

I liked me a slow, long, hard fuck**.**

As for landscaping, lest we were talkin' 'bout Bella's grooming technique, I couldn't give two shits. I was three sheets to the wind, intoxicated on her enchanting fuck-me presence.

I'd been so bound by propriety, etiquette inbred from my turn-of-the-century upbringing; my society mother had been a matron of charities, my uppercrust father a patron of the arts. With just me, their prodigal offspring. _I think I'd loved them. _I knew there were three things I'd carried on into this world with me, after they'd succumbed from influenza just the same way as other house-filled families, clutched with grippe and the cadaver-walk to morgue and cemetery: my mind-goring insight, my inability to see, _fully_, all permutations of the color red and a gallant propensity that set me up for a fall.

_She'd given me away._ _Elizabeth Masen had offered me up to Carl. _

After Esme came to us, fully-fledged, I'd left. Culpability, I'd imagined, belonged to my mother. When I'd killed during those few years, I'd believed myself a do-gooder, a savior of the populace. Fuck that. I'd just wanted to give in to the craving. The hot, open jugulars like fat, lithe sausages cased in opaque, easily punctured skin. Links of throbbing nourishment, another step in the food chain, that's all they were to me.

I went back. Emmettjoined us. I fucking gave up meat for 'green leafy vegetables' aka mammalian and reptilian hooch, only occasionally going off the set-menu. My tastebuds trilled to the flavor of flash-flooding, fuming, long drinks of sanguine legginess following down my throat like vintage wine to a crystal glass.

I was a fucking vampire.

I never apologized. And no one asked me to. Apart from the graveside families.

As if we were monied high-classed citizens, we four Grand Toured to Europe from our wanderings in the Northern Territories of the un-United States. In Romania we met up with Tweedle Dead and Tweedle Deader; Vladimir and Stefan. Old friends, and by _old_ I meant fucking ancient with their twin, tissue-paper-thin, midget-like bodies trussed up in velvets that spoke of the midnight hour and ruffled blouses; phantasmagorical horrors such as Bela Lugosi engendered.

Only their feral eyes alight with fervor and curiosity like bees buzzing in a colony amidst fine, fragile, birch bark-lined visages allowed for their being _alive_.

From their hive-like mentality, I plucked out a few gems to stow away. Transgressions brought to bear by the great famed so-called peacekeepers of the vampire empire, the Volturi, provided light reading to me.

Crossing to Italy, we made acquaintance with the trio of arcane tyrants: Caius, Marcus, _Aro._ They'd given Carl his first home, nurtured him, and ultimately demoralized him for seeking free range fodder to such an extent he was compelled to make his own way.

Aro, _Nero._ I suspected him of having named himself after that extravagant, mad, prosecutorial emperor. He was nothing if not of like personality. Hungry. Crazed. A crusader against any blood-drinker who might reveal the depths of our secret supernatural society walking among mortal beings. Even their standard colors in silk banners raised all along the walls spoke of malevolent genocide.

Religion meant nothing to him, the sacredness of body even less. All that mattered was his image as Godfather, and gatekeeper of survival among eternals.

He was fucking probably into boys too. _Doddering tea-bagger_.

Catacombs and webbed passages of dewy, bitten stone left out into a round chamber roofed by a dome that looked to have been painted by a Renaissance master. Light sprinkled and lit glitters of dust from the high ramparts. Impaling marble tiles whose color bled out in the dusky light to monochromic nothingness.

We were so fuckin' naïve!

He didn't walk. Fuck no! Just like JHC himself, the magisterial, lily-white, yellow-bellied bastard floated to us, hooking both one finger and one eyebrow like a marionette first fashioned in Egypt one thousand years after his birth in 1000 B.C.

A gilded lily gifted with ability as potent as my own, in its own manner. One touch of his flaky fingertips, and he could see every instant of the life of the person he caressed with his sedated flesh.

This was a fool's errand.

I turned on my heel, my brogues clicking two steps before a vision in dark gray, 'bout the size of a cockroach, scuttled from beneath a shadowed vestibule, shook its insect mantis' head beneath the Klan-like hood, wove a hand throughout the air casting a spell of pain so real it vivisected me! I screamed, flailed like a dying fish with the hook caught in my gills, suffering shocks, and stab wounds, and red-hot pokers to my wide-open eyes!

Just as abruptly, the affliction ceased.

"Arrrrg!" I grabbed at my hair, trying to rip out the lingering vestiges of torture.

Hovering closer, Aro offered his hand. I took it without thinking.

The instant he touched my palm, I was soldered to him. Our eyes locked, his seething, mine blanching.

Raping my mind, sifting through my lives, seeing _everything, _Aro tightened his hold with might at odds with his feeble, decadent corpse_._ Polarically entwined, I pillaged frantically into the tombs of ash and burn and corruption wafting smoke around his thoughts.

A cosmic _BOOM_ struck us apart, jettisoning us to opposite sides of the chamber en ronde! Glass like rain wasted its sharp shards to the floor, glittering crystals bouncing in the aftermath of utter fucking quiet.

Aro's eyes blazed black fire, and mine were his mirror.

Shaking out his cloak, sweeping down the material so the folds sat just right on his wraithlike frame, his lips split with a raptor's glean, his fossilized eyes awoke with hunger for novel, genetic material.

Aro knew my power, and I understood, equally, his malfeasance. Seeking complete obeisance, worried about his half-sister's affection for Marcus, Aro had ended Didyme's life on the battlefield, committing sororicide. Blaming the assassination on our Romanian friends, Aro had taken the opportunity to bind Marcus more completely to him and to elevate his standing as King of our stationary race.

War and vengeance came down to two things…I'd seen it then, I only understood it now, as I neared telling Bella the truth, and putting her life into danger. _Greed for women and hunger for power._

We escaped through propriety alone.

Heidi delivered the nightly banquet, going so far as to herd a small family of deer to us Cullens from the Palace's grounds. Cagily, Aro and I sidestepped each other; neither of us wanted to give away any more guarded secrets. I knew he wanted into my head, but not at the cost of giving away more of himself.

We didn't stay, though etiquette bade Aro offer us sanctuary for as long as we liked. Bidding the Brothers Grimm goodbye, we two had bowed our heads to each other, and I watched a lethal injection of liquid silver dribble around his tongue as he pronounced my name. Arrogantly, I tsked him. "Now, now, Aro. It won't do to kill or kidnap your guests of honor." A roll of a growl waved up his be-ribbed torso but never met air, though he gnashed nearer my throat.

Ever since, Aro had had a tripe-skinned, blistered, and possibly VD-ridden hard-on for me.

_This_ was a reason we feared the Volturi.

_This was the reason _I was cautious of Alice, the uncharitable changeling, and whatever her clandestine doings with those denizens of destruction might have been.

Making it known that Aro knew of my talent, and confessing _his sins_ to my family, I advised urgency into our relocation. Just my fucking luck we emigrated to good old, dismalfriggin' Blighty. Cold as a witch's tit. Fuckin' dolorous, dreary, and pretty much the antithesis of this little slice of rebel heaven. England put me in an even fouler mood. Dicking it to High Street twits, knocking back glasses of lager, chasing the goddamn endless Moors for sheep and just hoping the little woolen meals on legs weren't carriers of foot and mouth disease, that the big-eyed bovid cows didn't have a trace of BSE, all of it bored me…_to death._

Fuck me; it was as if the weather itself had a causal relationship on my mental well-being, which had admittedly never been the best. _Yeah, seasonal affective disorder._ Maybe I'd had that. _Jesus Hairy Cunt, now I was thinkin' like Bubba!_

Chelsea was sent to seduce me, not like it'd take much. She was a good fuck, but she made me into a walking zombie soon as I'd ejaculated into her! And I wasn't really into the undead, for all that I was one.

Carl took one look at me, all lackluster and even more unfeeling, and he knew. Ahead of Chelsea and me, he tore across continents, presenting himself to Aro, giving the Head Cunt in Charge the one thing he'd always wanted of my sire; samples of his poison so he could pretend to be a Renaissance man trying to wrangle the mystery of Carl's ability to deal with human blood as a surgeon and never partake.

Mad Fucking Scientist.

It did the trick though.

Carl saved me.

He gave his life force, his innate essence for me.

I was released to my father, made weightless from Chelsea's paralyzing Valium-like intertia. Reinvigorated.

Weakened, for a change, Carl allowed me to shore him up all the way back to the UK.

We had to move on again. They wouldn't stop searching, trying to inveigle their flinty, false hands into my vampire anomaly. Aro wanted me for his crown jewel.

When the others suggested Washington, I put my foot down. There was no fucking way! Did they want me to commit suicide by vampire? How much murkiness could one immaculate take?

The South became our home. _Yeah, _I liked it here. Devil-may-care was the definition of this place. I rutted like a stag in springtime, let loose, and it fucking felt so good. Females, vampires…_whatever I fancied._

Now it was all coming to roost, just like a homing pigeon, because of Bella. I couldn't fuck her because, _God-Fuckin'-Almighty_, I felt something for her. Standing stock-still by the very idea of telling her of my nature, yet knowing I couldn't just go on letting shit happen without some sort of truth outtin', I wanted to bail. I wanted to be better. _I wanted to be just a man._

I was still uneasy as a black-masked, rare, Fox Squirrel that Laurent and Vicky – _fuckin' 80's glam rocker wannabe –_ had made it as close as Myrtle Beach. Not to mention Jagoff Jenks. That was too mother-ass close for comfort!

There was a reason I never shoulda' gotten involved with Bella. I was putting her life in danger. Now? It was too late. I'd ignored her, pushed her away, pissed her off.

_Now?_

I just needed her.

I couldn't go much further without coming clean.

_God, how much I wanted to eat her clean out! She was here! _Planting her hips against mine and rising on the balls of her feet so her cunt shivered against the hardness of my cock. I was still making crisp pinnacles over her nipples, grabbing back behind her to yank her tendrils, unwrapping her neck to the sunset sky.

Spongy swamp grass and moss dripped over her, fast drying. There was one exquisite delta of Bella I knew would be wet.

_Bella._

She was a hot fucking mess, and I wanted nothing more than to back her up to the Bronco, let out my cock and push it right up into her muggy channel.

The least I could do was offer to wash her up. _With my hands and tongue._

For damn sure, I was getting me some poontang tonight.

I slipped my fingers 'neath the straps her tank top that was now half-hanging off her with all the nips and tears I'd caused, and, with my palms flat running boards from the hemisphere of her collarbone to the upmost sail of her tits, I curled my fingers into the border of the top and pulled it over the sexy slopes of her breasts.

Breathy whispers and gravel-dust and porch swings and drive-in movies…all those things sat inside her sensual voice, "You gonna' strip me in the driveway, baby? Or do you want to take this someplace more private? 'Cause I don't really favor the idea of sharing you with your neighbor lady over there," Bella pointed her finger to Miss Delia's parted, ratty, cirrhosis-yellow curtain where a baker's dozen eyes stared out at us.

_~~ll~~_

Dripping muck mulched from us to the stained, threadbare carpeting inside as I led Bella with a lazy smile to the bathroom so small it was a tight squeeze for both of us, but I wasn't complaining. I turned on the old tap and listened to the wheeze and clank of pipes shifting out cold water for hot. Turning, I was tethered to Bella, and my thick shaft rested weightily against her hip. She twined her hands into my hair and grinned up at me, "Oh my hell, Eddie. What you packin' in there? A roll of tube socks?" I merely raised one eyebrow. "A spool of Susan B. Anthonys?"

I barked out a laugh, "Love, _it_ may be money, but no. This," I stroked up and down so she could feel the full length of me, "is all me."

Undulating like a willowy, fatal oleander, she pushed her tongue to the hollow of my throat so I tipped my head back with a grunt, "_Mmm, _I know. Baby, it feels long and fresh as the stock of your Winchester."

_Oh fuck. If she was gonna' talk guns to me, I was gonna' lose my load in my jeans like pimply-faced fifteen-year-old!_

We shed our clothes like diamondback slither skin falling to the floor.

Opening the inverted triangle of fabric, I pushed my messy jeans down past my thighs so she could look at me, the unending, thick muscle of my cock throbbing in its arc across the top of my leg, fat and dark like a water moccasin, drenched with need, cool and smooth but for the platform of veins lifting beneath my skin, saturating me. The same profound starvation as the night before, after our duet at my piano, took her light brown eyes to a darkness of the Earth's mantle. Bella licked her lips, and my cock lying chock-full of cum over my upper thigh twitched as if touched.

"Oh my God! GIANT PENIS, you weren't kidding!" Bella blurted out with a burst of feminine giggles and I laughed too, that was a compliment of the finest sort in my book.

The light in here was less forgiving and a bit too fucking bright with our unshaded, energy saver lightbulbs, but it let my eyes, fast dragging to creosote, take in every bit of Bella I'd never had the chance to savor.

With a lazy smile, I shucked off the rest of my clothes and leaned back to the condensation drizzled wall, my forearms crossed over my trunk.

Slowly, she undressed. With all the lights on. I cleared my throat when her top came off. I tilted over when she propped first one and then the other tall-booted foot on the lid of the toilet seat, unthreading her laces, her tits hanging low, her teats brushing her thighs and turning to tip-topped, creamy-colored mountains. Sitting down on the loo, Bella spread her legs, smiled at me and lifted a heel to me. Sinking low, I brought that first foot to my crotch, fighting the delectable urge to rub her sole up and down my boner. I worked her Timberlands off her feet unhurriedly, my eyes never leaving hers, my ears timing the pitter and patter of her heart. Running my fingers under her denims, I tickled her ankles until she giggled, and I brought off her socks too, licking just once longingly along her arched instep.

I stood straighter when she swept her hips from side to side, to aid in shedding those skintight jeans. My thermal cock swung with the vision of that goddamn sheer thong sitting with little black strings over her hipbones and a perfect tiny rose cross-stitched over her beautiful pussy lips. I definitely wanted to pay _lip-service_ to her.

My voice lowered to a rough baritone, "_Fuck, Bella._"

The barometer plummeted out of the bottom of my stomach. I clenched my fists, straining just to watch Bella unwrapping herself like the best fucking Christmas present ever.

The small curve of her lips was tainted with pure sensuality and woman. She hooked her fingers into the scrap of mesh and brought it down her legs in sensuous, hypnotic motions.

I stalked to her, just as she was about to enter the shower.

Nothing short of immediate dismemberment could stop me from walking to her as she braced the filmy door open with one hand, and reached inside with the other to adjust the temperature. Steam was frosting over the mirror on the little medicine cabinet that held all of Bubba's recent medicinal purchases, reflecting ghostly, naked images of us.

Her ass was bared to me, the shadows and lights of her back bouncing, the keys of her spine like ivory and the side of her breast a pendulum tease that swung in a tick tock motion. Swell of hips like a wave, so curvaceous and unexpected.

There were two small dark brown dots on her right tit, one at the top crest, the other just off center from her nipple. Reaching out, I poked the moles, grabbed her hands and held them behind her back and lowered my mouth to the raised periods, dragged my harsh breath that raised wanton shivers to her divine peak, lapping it like blood from a doe's opened carotid.

I took her summit with me as I rose again before letting the tasty flesh fall from my pursed lips with sucking sound and slap of skin, releasing her breast to my palm waiting to catch it.

So close, her freckles dusting like pale glitter across her straight nose, her widow's peak tracked with grime made me smile through the dense fog of lust crushing my balls.

I was fucking pussy-matized. My dick was a meaty, long, solid thing that hurt with each motion, perpendicular to my groin, sticky, pulling me to Bella. My cock was a dog, and she held the leash.

Bella knuckled the base of my erection, and I had to fight to restrain myself from mangling the silver-plated, plastic shower handle. Savage, wild, heated, horny, the things I wanted to do to her were erotically unmentionable.

With a brush of my hand to the underside of her thigh, I ushered Bella into the shower stall. She grabbed a handful of my ass and pulled me in with her.

Predatory and smirking through my scandalous thoughts, a grin toughened by the veneer of _must fucking have her now._

Excitement trapped Bella in a hold of hedonism as she observed me advancing into the cubicle. "Baby, you're fucking gorgeous," that breathy, honeycomb, rusky voice of hers should be sold as a fuck-me ringtone.

Her fingers followed her heated inspection, strolling over my shoulders, tweaking my nipples, flattening over my pectorals, seating her fingers into the juts of muscled ribs at my sides. I couldn't stop the shift of my hips to every caress, nor the groan clouding the air between us. Biting her inner cheek, Bella snagged her own skin. Her eyes widened while mine turned further to molten lead as, with a deep tug of moist air, I gathered the fragrance of her rich, mealtime feast. Sniffing at her mouth, I pushed my tongue inside the damp cave and licked the small cut, blending my skull and crossbones venom to her blood wet. Merely a trickle. _But it tasted so damn good!_ This iron feast made a downright fuckin' mockery of all the human vessels I'd drunk from!

Tangling my tongue with hers, Bella broke my hold. Her throaty mewl, as she flicked over my tastebuds still yearning for liquid refreshment, stamped a call of want above and beyond the yen for her enchanting blood.

One minor wound opened, one fat drop in my mouth…_this was why I couldn't have Bella, could never make love to her, not without full disclosure. A ghoul, a monster, I was an unlikely macabre beast with maniacal tendencies! That thing that went bump in the night and killed, stole lives, drank blood for fuck's sake! I'd murdered and never repented. I was the cause of nightmares and the reason loved ones left home, never to return except in a closed casket. Even now, one part of me wanted to tear into her galaxy of veins, when this creature reared its head, challenging the bigger part of me that wanted to protect and know her, and the _biggest_ part of me that wanted to fuck her solid. _

Cupping my jaw, she lowered my dead-bright eyes back to hers, "Eddie, where'd you go?"

I adjusted my heaving, onyx-ruby-gold faceted regard to her mouth, where a sliver of her song-blood sucked to the floor of slickness under her tongue.

"Your eyes!" Bella balanced up on the balls of her feet and stroked the skeins of weary skin under my eyelashes, laced her touch to my eyebrows, settled her mouth to mine and lathed a humid road to and fro until the tip of mine met hers.

I closed my eyes. Closed that book on my past, at least for now.

Famine over feast. Making some semblance of love, denying bodily fluid.

Thickening like pea soup, the hot steam in the shower congealed misty formations around us. Hot water spit upon my skin, like bare feet on black tarmac in August. This sauna felt like fucking heaven, washing away my purgatorial imperative, with Bella, a beautiful, lasciviously nude, naked angel.

"You're cold, baby, let me warm you up," sliding the door back on its rusted track, Bella reached out to grab the stool Alice had used to dust some fucking thing or other beyond her four-foot-nothing hands, placing it on the tub floor. Bella beckoned me to sit. So her nipples were at tonguing level. _Yes, please._ I licked them torpidlywhile she scrubbed my scalp with her bitten-off fingernails shredding just slightly more against my undinted skin.

Her fingers sliced into the hollows of my cheeks, "So smooth…what do you shave with?" I ignored her question because, _fuck_, I couldn't forms coherent words if I tried! And no way could I explain at this moment. The feel of a woman's touch hot against me, _everywhere_, was blissful.

Falling to her knees and working up a lather, my back seething against the cold, cracked tiles whose grout were black with specks of mildew, Bella couched intimately between my splayed thighs.

Indescribable pleasure at being bathed by her, cared for by her, succored, equaled my building arousal.

She doused me with water sluicing from my hair to my chest to my dark, slicked down pubes. Rivulets of foam eating into the divots of my muscles on every unearthly, toned plane of my body.

I could hardly breathe. Forgot I didn't need to. I focused on her mounds, playing warm water around them and following the streams created amongst her dewy breasts and tear-drop nipples, welling in her navel to flood out in waterfalls to her cunt. I watched the rain run down her body so I didn't wad-out before she even touched my cock.

With a dulcet tap to the top insides of each of my thighs, Bella prodded my legs farther and washed me there too before trailing those soap-covered tips to my balls, firmly rolling my scrotum so a fissure of pure fucking want opened up from the twin-sided cut of muscles on my lower abdomen and on up to my tum. Capillaries racing with starchy venom, standing out like lilac highways all over my cock and a map eroding my stomach, bolts of flame persecuted me! She touched each vein with bubbles on her fingertips, pressing but never making a dent.

When she'd worked her way down to the very soles of my feet and all the way back up, over my stomach, into the recess of my belly button, and my torso, she dove into my armpits. And it fucking tickled so that I laughed! and shook my hair at her, the copper now tarnished with water. As she finished with my arms down to my fingers, I stood up above her, bound her hands more firmly, towed her over me, gasping at wet, Saharan skin tripping into my arctic tundra, and whispered, "My turn."

I had her right where I wanted her, on her fucking queenly ass, before me. Standing candidly between her thighs that parted like the sigh opening her lips to air, I had to close my eyes against the sight of my thick, white cock less than inches from her mouth. When I opened my dusky, sun-bitten orbs again, I saw she'd followed my look and was licking her fucking lips as she stared at me. The only color in my skin the deep, jagged blue of toxin pounding ribbons all over the ridges. My head had swollen with her earlier ministrations. Velvet to first touch, beneath I was pure fucking rock.

Emptying dollops of shampoo into my palm, my dick wove closer with each brush of my wide hands braiding suds into her tangles. Arching her back so the sting of perfumed bubbles didn't leak into her eyes, I began rinsing Bella's mane, inadvertently hitting her in the face with my shaft. My tip seemed to think her cheek was almost as good a home as her mouth would be, and it took grueling willpower for me to draw back from her face.

Bella's eyes opened, widened, lit with sprinkles of amusement, "_Damn_, you don't have to dickslap me, just ask me if you want it," she teased, winked, grinned, "Stud."

I made pretzels of her hair and frowned so hard my face was caving in. _Fuck me._ My arms quivered, trying to keep my determined dick from her opening lips.

"Anyway, I think I forgot a bit. Perhaps I'll just clean you…_with my mouth_," Bella's plush lips purled outward, the tip of her tongue a pointed thing seeking my head.

_Fuck me harder! _A blowjob? Jesus mother-cunt yes!

A Bella-blowjob? _Oh Christ!_ I'd never had my cock sucked by a human chick; the idea of my meat inside a masticating cave that ate food made not only Bubs, but even _me_, nauseous,this was simply something I'd never cottoned onto, for all the civilian bitches I'd fucked.

Now? _Yes, HELLS YES._

She bent back on the stool and opened those lips to me. My leaking, engorged, thick mushroom head lingered upon her juicy lips before slowly propelling past and under and _into_ her. A _slurp_ made my knees weak. A suck and push into her cheek caused me to cry out! When the steep cliff of my cock's head purchased Bella's mouth, and she stole her tongue right into, _pressing hard_, the crepe-de-chin skin, a rumble of thunder shook my chest, and I let loose her hair before I yanked it from her scalp!

Her neck was a rainbow, and I watched, enamored, as my dick went down inside her taut throat. This enclosure felt different from her pussy surrounding my fingers inside, and at that thought my erection jumped, bumping the roof of her mouth. My fingers itched to drown in her other wet, swollen venue. Swallowing, swigging, sipping back up my length to tease out more drips of ether, Bella shook her head and shifted her neck so I went deeper still on her next downtake.

Tears tracked her cheeks in sluggish, amorphic lines, the agony to have more, to move, to fuck, to give and get….all those emotions I read in her eyes, her stunning mouth breathing new life into me, in the arch of her back, the lunge of her pelvis, the pulse ripping out her throat and the hoist of her tits! _I felt it too!_ Like a caul, her mouth and throat worked. As she ingested my dick I denied delirium in order to watch my lengthy tool winding in out of her sizzling esophagus.

My eyelids scratched, and my brain was a locomotive stalled on the tracks with breaks hissing steam. With my sternum lifting and descending, then high and crashing, I watched the pulsation of my ridged erection curling in and out, shifted my hips to take up more space inside of her neck that simply should not exist.

Raising my arm, I beat the tiled top of the shower. Lowering my fist, I rolled around above Bella and wanted to crash to my knees.

My balls were tight as conkers.

I should stop her. But I couldn't; this was too much and too fucking good.

Her tongue was a skewer, her lips an envelope. Her throat a clenching gasping cave. Underwater and drowning.

Bella licked and pushed into the hidden slit leaking diamonds of my vital contaminant out my cock's hood, inserting her luscious, lapping tongue. Lower, she rasped like a cat, all damp and sharp feelers that were raised 'gainst me, tiny buds of intense hills, meeting my meat and scoring the overhang of my cock.

I turned into a satyr, I gave over.

A simple breath bestowed by Bella tore right down my stiff rod. And she followed it, tracing the line, like the Mason-Dixon she'd followed away from her mother, with an open flat tongue hungering for more.

Up and down, flat as fine linen paper. Sucking me in demandingly and pulling me out ductilely.

Situating myself more steadily, I pushed one fist into her hair, one forearm upon the grotty, stained tile. It would see more polluted semen tonight.

Guiding her wet lips and face over and under and around me. Touching the toned ring of her lips as I soared in and out; this was the damn sexiest thing I'd ever seen.

My groin was a delirious thing dancing like a puppet to the strings of her strident touches. I swept my errant dick over her lips. Around her mouth. Into her hair, which I wrapped like silk upon me while I tried not to breathe, not to sense, not to think.

Stretching up, Bella smiled, celestially, salaciously, and worked my curling iron to her tendrils, in her fist. I washed down her face touching her eyelids, the tip of her nose, the dimples of her cheeks. Deliberately, she slipped me against her tits. I almost came right then!

Total mayhem wracked me as she enclosed my erection between the damp compress of her breasts!

Southward, Bella moved me to better, wetter, tauter climes as she stood and knocked the stool back with a shove of her heel.

Goddamn saucy!

Sounds of lust incarncate scorched beneath the drip of my piddling shower.

My huge begging-for-a-cummin' cock circled and held fast to her needing-a-fuck swollen, neatened flower.

Her ass and pussy called to me.

I was vast. Colossal against her enflamed lips overflowing with all the blood I wanted to suck from her, overcome by racy images of the ways I wanted to fuck her.

The hooked tip of my fat dowel brushed against her. We were both sticky, yearning, greedy.

Brusquely, ungentlemanly, I widened her stance, kicking out her calves. Bracing her spine to the wall, I turned up the heat.

Scooping a palm full of liquid to her bushy heaven, I rinsed her luxuriously with all my fingers before I prodded the warmed cowl with my cock.

Bella pleaded, beating my arms with her fists, grabbing my shoulders, bowing her back, beseeching, her head thrashing so her soaking hair lashed tiny paper-cut sharp blades of sweetgrass, "Please, please, please…" She rubbed against the escarpment of my thigh.

My face hurt from the effort of not fucking cumming, _not yet._

I took my cock in one hand, her delta in the other. Predatorily, I brought our flesh together, probing her with my tumescence.

I almost blacked out; Em would've had fun trying to revive me from a concussion.

Bella balked at the bit when I held her restrained by her waist.

Plaiting her hair in my fingers, groaning madly and grunting like a fucking animal I bashed the impulse to Fuck. Her. Hard.

I couldn't. I shouldn't even be here, fucking balls out, naked, and blazing with her.

_I couldn't have her body her if she didn't even know I wasn't even a man; I was just as likely to have her blood. She didn't understand the ramifications. That if I fucked her I might likely kill her. I felt that much out of control._

"Bella, BELLA, _Bella._ We can't!"

She slipped her heathen tongue along the crook of my neck, and the conflagration made combusting dynamite tear up my insides. All naked, all wet and slippery, she draped those ripe arms up over my shoulders and forged all the way against me, hissing iron against cold steel. Skimming up and down so my dick mapped a trajectory along her glossy carnelian lips to her clitoris, skating back and forth, she rode me bareback before rising up on her tippy toes and toppling into me. Bella made needlework of my brain, crochet of my crotch, and sewed me up into the most hellish quilt of passion I would shred apart in an instant as her soft voice, deliciously roughened like the taste buds on her trickling tongue looping like raspy yarn around the cockle shell of my ear, unraveled me.

A succulent nibble on my lobe that was more a pebble than flesh, a sharp inhalation along the curling, breathy words fucked me so hard, "_You taste so good, Eddie." _ She plumped and pursed that Magdalene mouth in a kiss of destruction right over my ear, "Why ever not?"

My cock was parting a highway between her legs, sopping with her, more than the scalding water. So broad, so tall, my glistening-rivered penis curved up into the cleft of her rear – _Do not even think of her tight ass wrapped around you like a vice! Focus on the pussy. No, don't think about the pussy! Bad idea, very fuckin' bad idea! Breathe, asshole, before she notices that you don't need to breathe! _– whilst the overflowing base of my shaft and my thriving, abrasive hair took up residence against her engorged nubbin.

Roll.

Dip.

Heat and suction.

Suck and kiss.

_Kiss and lunge._

_But don't fuckin' fuck!_

Every Christly thing from her jiggling tits to her bouncing ass was superlative, and her premier pussy seizing my cock summoned me.

Buttermilk thighs, biscuit tits, GOD! Bella was an open-faced, blueplate sandwich special at Mama Brown's.

Bella was my wet dream.

Bella was my fantasy other life.

The one I wasn't owed.

The channel of her cunt held me. The node of her clit goaded me. And, _shit-sucke_r, she'd asked me a question? I grunted. I glowered. The sound that came out of my throat was starving and in need of satiation, desperate for drink and the food of her gorgeous topped lips, "I could kill you."

I was _not_ going to fuck Bella in a shower, 'specially not this piece of crap modular home mock-up. I wanted to make love to her in a bed, of all the fucking obscene places. _At least the first time, and then all bets were off._

I was _not _going to have her, as my woman, my mate, until she knew the truth. No matter how much my dick sank against her slippery lips like a divining rod dousing water.

The slim hand that had just been simpering up and down my ribs, counting the bones cast in sin, fell down without falter to the snatch sandwich she made of me. With one, two, three steps back, Bella enclosed two hands around me, scrutinized me so fucking agonizingly gradually as her fingers did the walking. A torqued, torrid stroll that circled up, swooped across my head that ballooned a-fuckin'-gain, and then traipsed back down, pressing along the ridged cylinder and tugging at the vein that tried to escape right into her palm!

Her eyes were damp with yearning. The quickness with which she looked up to me was shocking and made the muscles in my braced thighs and my abdomen pound.

That goddamn smirk and wink won over awe at the sight of me jolting in and out and in and out of her grip. Licking her lips, with just the tiny tip of her tongue, Bella held me rapt, wrapped, and broke me down, "You ain't that big, Eddie."

I cupped her own little sexy bit of Mount Pleasant. I implored with my eyes, she entreated with her breaths, linking our lips and tongues in kisses that just made me want _more._

She relented. I reined her closer. I fingered the dimples that topped her bottom, rubbed the pearish shape. She wrangled my thighs and sat her mouth to my throat with kittenish licks that littered little bites here and there.

_Hell, I was that big, and I couldn't wait to do her proper. _I just knew my curved cock would hit that hidden, tiny, pearlescent nodule inside.

Instead, I ringed around her clitoris, slip-slided between her lips, squashed her thighs together so the fixed grasp made us both shut the hell up.

Spiraling against each other, we stopped breathing. Every single fucking muscle, nerve, breath, halted! I clawed against the snowflake-patterned plexiglass as I stilled in rigor mortis. Bella blew her neck back to the thrump of her petit mort. When air took back into our throats, yells and guttural screams shivered just as much as our bodies rolling back into tissue and feeling from white-hot, atomic implosion.

Shredded, I pointed my cum down the drain, watching the whirlpool of mud and toxin circling the trap before escaping into the silver holes.

"_Oh god."_

"_Jesus fuck."_

I felt raw. Every bit of me trembled. Bella was plastered to the wall, knees bent, hair hanging lank, eyes closed and sublime smile on her kissed-hard lips.

Blinking, I turned off the shower.

Bella rallied and dusted her hands off. Dreamily, she seemed quite pleased with herself. Matter of fact, she pronounced with a sleepy slur, "Guess that's that then." I smirked but hid my new growing stiff-one from her clover field eyes. 'Course I was already on the rise, but I didn't need her to note my inhuman _recovery time._ Fuckin' perpetual boner was hurting me like a hex upon my hard-on!

Bringing her to me, I cradled wet Bella, and turned off the lights that hit my skull like a heat-lamp.

I'd just have to choke my throttle later, probably again and again.

For now, Bella had that suck-ass curfew to attend to, and the last thing I wanted was to get put in the doghouse, with that slobber monkey cur Jacob no doubt, again by Sheriff Shafter.

This time it was me who applied, "We still have some talkin' to do."

I dried her off and helped her get dressed, stepped into my jeans. Barefoot, I toweled and brushed her hair while she sat in the dark kitchen snacking on a portion of Mama's upside-down cake, sharing a beer with me.

"Don't I know it, Eddie." Pivoting in the chair, Bella tenderly painted my belly with her fingertips, "Let's just be normal for one more night."

"Tomorrow?" My charcoal heart sank to my feet as I stamped from side to side.

"Tomorrow," was her answer upside my mouth with a sleepy kiss.

Driving her home, this replete, hopeful silence was a better sanctuary than Mepkin Abbey. At her house, I opened her door, tucked her arm around my elbow, and kissed just her brow. _I still swatted her ass._

Back to Luxury Hollows, I tidied up. Towels were laid out to dry; my clothes were hampered for Maw to warsh. I scrubbed Bella's dish. Drank another few PBBs and sank my teeth into my nightly Meals-Ready-to-Eat.

In all my ninety-two years nothing had come close to _this._

Bella chucked shockwaves to my heart and ampoules throughout my body! Shackles of my demonic prison dropped away in her presence. _And I felt…_

Bella was here. Bella was human.

I wanted her to know. I wanted to know if she'd still need me, want to know me, as I was. _As a vampire._

Dead Man's Walk was to be mine.

_Yeah, we all had our crosses to bear._

_

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~I had the most reviews ever last time, just over 50 since Light Artillery! There was a lot of history and A LOT of HOT in there. When your brain stops 'gasming, tell _us_ what you think~

**Rie**: So, Eddie, what you got to say for yourself?

**Eddie**: Well, clearly I'm fucked. And not in the way I want to be, Rie.

**Rie**: So what the hell with that goofy grin on your face?

**Eddie**: I kinda feel…_good._

**Rie**: *smiles*

**Eddie**: Well, don't get comfy or anything, you still have a fucking huge amount of work to do.

**Rie**: What-_ever._ So, ladies (gents), Eddie wants to know what y'all want in your stockings?

**Eddie**: Uh, _not quite._ I asked you to ask _them_ if they want _me_ to _stuff_ their _stocking._

**Rie**: OH! Cain't you just wish our readers a Merry Christmas?

**Eddie**: *wicked grin* How 'bout _Happy H00rlidays'_?

So, review replies are now by Eddie, mostly. And I gotta' say, it's quite funny how y'all sit up straight in your chairs when the menfolk are talkin' direclty to ya'.

* * *

_Carnal Knowledge 101_ has begun. Dirty Didacticward is just as sexy and funny as Eddie in his own esoteric, erotic right. SassyB. Is no to be missed.

Just a little note from me and Miss Robin, my sinister sister: _The Bride of Edward Cullen_ won Joint First Place for Les Femmes Noires Competition! Thanks everyone who read, reviewed, and voted. You can find the link to our collab profile, the story, and the C2 on my profile.

Twilight Twenty-Five Challenge voting ends on Jan. 1st.

Shimmer Awards voting begins on Dec. 27th.

Links, stories, voting info all on my profile.

* * *

Finally, I'm going to take a minute to shout-out to my girls, the most incredible group of clever, funny, filthy (_really filthy_), talented and compassionate women I know. Many of them are writers themselves. I'm going to Christmas pimp them:

**RowanMoon** writes _Broken Dol_l: Supernatural, supremely written, filled with legend and lore. Mature, intense, gorgeous, and suspenseful. Bella is one powerful…_witch._ AU

**Gasaway Alley**, _Kick the Tires and Light the Fires_: Well, yeah! Racetrackward and…._NascarBella!_ It's hot, on fire; you can hear the breaks squealing and the eroticism speeding! AU

**AmeryMarie**, _Bad Habit_: Edward is sexy, Edward is _bad_. Or is he? Bella's the new kid, Bella's _innocent._ Or is she? Fucktastic, incredibly well written fic. AH

**Jaspersbrand**, _Wonderwall_: A story about friendship, the wonderment of first love, the wondering how it all went wrong. AH

**Rosebella75, **_Forbidden Desire_: I think all I gotta' say is Roman baths, loin cloths, Togaward, and a hedonistic society . AH

**winterstale**_, Sire_: I love this woman's quirky, downhome, intensely real writing! _She loves Emmett. _ Em's specialty, for seventy-five immortal years, is sport-fucking until he finds the one woman who fills his senses and takes his fancy. AU

**vanessarae, **_Seventeen Cakes_: What's that movie again, you know, the '80's one? Oh yeah, _that one._ This is a funny, sweet story about the boy Bella never thought she could bag. AH

~I missed some of y'all, I'll catch you next time~

_**Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas, y'all!**_


	15. Feed Your Head

**vanessarae and Viola Cornuta** are a devious, devilish, goddamn awesome beta duo! Cheers for trying to keep Eddie in bounds, and for your help with my insane ideas…and for letting me make-up words.

Ta to **winterstale**for your, um, spiffy spliffy help!

As ever, couldn't do it without my DW tramps. You know who you are, and that I'd probably be a complete and utter mess without you!

**Disclaimer: **Yeah, I don't think SM intended this at fucking all, but hey, she did create the original characters.

~~A lot of my bb's need laughs and love right now. This is for y'all.~~

* * *

**Feed Your Head**

_Fuckin' A._

_Tomorrow._

A green-smelling cloud of pot smoke wafted to me through the low-ceilinged hallway and drew me to the living room.

The Insightful Idgit reclined over the arm of the couch, her feet in Junior's lap and her head dangling back as she took a deep tow off the fat joint snugged between her lips.

_Breakfast, it was magically delicious._

Squinting at me through the mary jane haze, Alice nickel and dimed the reefer until the glowing ash got too close to her combustible fingers.

"Mornin'," Jazz nodded before digging in his jeans for the dime bag of ripe buds.

Lighting up, he passed me the Rizla-wrapped weed. I let the smoke fill my mouth before letting a small, whispery trail escape, breathing the rest into my resistant lungs, closing my eyes to the harsh burn and savoring the looseness in my joints.

_Well, hell, I had to live up to mah name as a deadbeat. _

The mellow – _if it's yellow – _beatnik himself broke out an elaborately carved bowl and topped it up with a pinch of pot, "So, sunshine, got sumthin' you wanna' share?" Like this was Vamps-fucking-humans Anonymous, and I was just going to spill my guts because I'd had a bit of hashish.

I tossed the roach to the tiny tinker and bellowed a giant cumulus of hazy fumes to my brother, "Yeah, jerkwad, give me the fucking bowl."

A gaseous pillow filtered down my throat, "Good shit, where'd you get it?"

"Alice grows her own," Jazz smirked and reached out for the pipe.

_Of course she fucking does._

He took a toke and grinned, "And she stole a pouch off that Rastafarian glam rocker Laurent when we killed him."

_Of course she fuckin' did._

My eyes creased as I looked to the Petite Prattler wedged up against Junior like Audrey Hepburn on drugs, "So you've been holding out all this time?"

"Man, it really does suck when you can't read someone's mind, huh?" Alice took three stiff hits from the doobie with her fingertips to her mouth, slyly eyeing me up.

"Just hand me the love boat, sister." For once, I wasn't in the mood to argue with her. The Good Morning Bong Club was the cure-all for the fucking pussy butterflies flapping their wings all through my stomach at the thought of coming clean with Bella. The popping seed and leaf and musty smoke resettled my memories of her, bare and beautiful and bawdy as hell in my shower last night. And I preferred to hold onto that.

Alice's head streaked to me, tapping my thoughts, a feral smile and buzzing atmosphere glossing up her wayfaring, witchy appearance.

Settling back in the recliner, I kicked up the footrest. One highlight of being a vampire, and not needing to breathe? A single ingestion could last a mighty long time…a little pot went a far piece, which of course suited parsimonious Jizzper.

Bubba busted in, tearing the goddamn screen door off the hinges one more fucking time, and peered through the foggy air before he found me, "Oh my god, dude, you're glowing!"

Sitting up straight, I coughed on a tug. Bubba was at my side in an instant with a fucking tissue and his flask of Nyquil at the ready. I pushed his Nurse Nightingale nurturing away, "Nah, man, it's just the sweat, 's'fuckin' May after all."

He put his unnaturally large palm to my forehead, and, I swear to Hell, I thought he was going to pull a thermometer out his ass, "Well, you feel a little bit warm." _Christ in Cracker Barrel, vampires do not run temperatures, At. Fucking. All._ "And, _sunshine,_" he had the audacity to slick a joking look to Jazz, "you're definitely…_radiant._"

Waving away a wisp of Miss Juana, I gave my diagnosis, "_What?_ Fuck off; you're probably hallucinating from sleep deprivation."

"Fuck you. I oughtta punch you in the snot-box. Seriously, braw, what's with the shit eating grin?"

"Just the homegrown, Bubba," I crossed my nonexistent heart and hoped to die, someday, _for good_.

"_Au contraire, mon frère,_ you been up to somethin'. Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Em walked to the recycle bin in the kitchen and pulled out Bella's Coke can. Making it concave with the force it'd take a human to swat a gnat, he made of its aluminum, red and white ribboned body a concave dip. He tore a square off the screen door with no thought to the repair Jazz and I'd done, and lined the puncture he made with the key he usually had crammed in his ear.

"Toss me one," Em held the redneck bowl out to Jazz. A lop of grass plopped down atop the miniature fencing, and he sparked the fender with his Bic. A swill of sweet smoke emitted the sharp opening, and he lipped it into his mouth, "_Ahhhh,_" holding his breath, he came back at me like Columbo , "I'm sensing…_nature's calling._"

Rearing back on the Lay-Z-Boy, I crossed swords with the bullock, "Now, ain't that a port-a-potty company? You'd know more about that then me."

"Whatever you say, but I checked your trashcan, and ain't no balled up tissues from last night….you're in the crapper, mate, and we're onto you."

The web of Bella's body wove over me again; wet, slick, hot, and sliding between my legs, my cock thrusting up against her soft, sweet lips, the feel of her mouth all over me…_and her fucking hands!_

I lost my focus.

Alice took note. The fanatical fairy decided it was a good time to chime in with her campanile conjuring words, "Eddie here got his first Bella blowjob."

Everyone stopped, with skunk sicker than possum blood railing about our throats.

_Mother. Fucker._

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What did _she_ see?" Em wanted details.

I stove my stony eyes to Alice and begged, "Jesus Christ, is nothing sacred? Tell me you're not seeing _that_!"

All sanctimonious, she sifted into Junior and rolled another blunt.

"What!?" I pounded.

_Fucking silence._

"I can't help it," I explained, "I've got a pornographic…_fuck_…photographic memory."

Em released a three-minute long toke of spliff-smoke and strolled to me, "Right on, my brother," pumping his meaty fist to mine.

In the background I easily heard Jazz whisper against his woman's ear, "See? _Sunshine._ I knew it."

Rolling the tube between my fingers, I gazed around at my family. Junior and his Chicken Little, Em…they all seemed stoked at my happiness. And I _was_ glowing, _I could feel it._ The way Bella made me feel something bigger, grander, better.

_Fuck, this had to be the dope talking._

Mercurial as the lowcountry summer thunderstorms raising up tornadoes, I felt queasy. It didn't matter how much I lo-…_liked…_Bella. There were too many bad, hurtful, just plain wrong parts of me.

Suddenly, I was glowering, seizing.

Thoughts of my admission looming, I pushed aside the pleasant buzz and focused on Alice.

Bubba gaped like a big mouth bass as I shoved him away to sit right in front of _her_ on the creaky coffee table, knocking my joint to the ashtray and straightening.

Jazz gathered my intentions and sat back while advising, "Go easy on her, Eddie. Nothin's ever as it seems…you of all people should know that."

The full force of my impulse to have Bella, forever, tore through my crotch and created heavy, heaving cliffs of my flesh. "Just tell me, Alice." My eyes tangled with hers, just the same, my fierce hands grappled with hers, exactly as demonic Aro's had with mine so many decades ago, as she sheltered more closely to Jazz, and I whispered, "I don't want Bella to be just another notch on my bedpost." A chill ran through me at the idea…_she was so much more._

Battling through self-protection, I sensed the truth serum of the weed working on her. Clenching her fingers inside mine, I worried for the inescapability about to unravel before me.

In darkness and violet nightshade, Alice's eyes dilated to the violence of hypnosis. A dead, raking tonality touched over her chiming voice, "What do you want to know?"

_Everything!_

A grim smile lifted up her lips at my silent exclamation.

_You can't._

I ripped through all I knew of her and all she'd shown me, warily.

_The piazza, the heartbeat…the sun and apparitions surrounding the person stumbled to the ground._

She jolted as if from a lightning strike and murmured in her spectral spell, "I can't. I cannot control what I see. That was but a breeze over my subconscious, a sun-dog, and I don't know where it came from, or where it leads."

Junior tried to control the severity splatting its vile way into her miniscule frame, but allowed me to continue.

I held on harder, knowing she wouldn't break, at least not physically, "Have you been with our enemies?"

The brush of Junior's fingers couldn't eclipse the shockwaves speeding over her form, charged by ampoules of frightening memories. Her face paled even more, her knuckles bleached to insubstantial skeletons, and maybe it was the pot talking, but I wanted to safeguard this woman…and Esme…Rose..._Bella._

Monotone and eerie, her vague, rushed proclamation sounded like a departed, rehearsed speech, a tremble-like Resurrection Fern accenting her mad Mississippi dialect, "No. You know James sired me…he was my only connection to the Volturi. When they learned of me, a human girl with power of precognition; an unguarded child literally left on her own in an asylum, with no family looking out for her," she shivered and retracted further into her midnight muslin, "they decided to find me, change me. At that time, James was part of The Guard, their master tracker. The hunt and game to attain me initially tantalized him for the first time in decades, so he splintered from them and found me. I often wonder if I were his singer, the need that spurred him to me, creating foes from his own cohorts… surely he'd have killed me outright if that was the case though."

Wayward, watchful, her eyes darted around the room, "I knew I was going to become a vampire. My entire life, what I still remember, was out of control, contained in the grasp of my people…a mother and father, who were supposed to care for me most, put me in a place -- _out of sight, out of my mind --_ where I was neglected, electrocuted, left in my own waste because of the future I could see."

I flinched from the poisonous, painful images flicking out of her mind like rapid stills – her head shaved, her gown filthy with excrement, her face as a human waxyand more lifeless when alive than now she was dead. Her shorn hair had only just begun growing back when she was turned to one of us. Sensing my strange confusion and pity, Jazz whispered, "Edward?"

I shook my head; I couldn't describe the abnormally gruesome scenarios she'd survived. Evading Jazz, I looked to Alice again and gathered in her strength and bearing… _her love for Jazz_. Against my will, I felt sympathy.

Her stupor sunk lower, and Junior held tighter to her rigor mortis frame, a blond angel of death to a rightfully vengeful, jet black revenant. Licking like damp clusters of slimy mold, her droning voice fell back through time, "Becoming an immortal, being able to use my visions as I saw fit eased my madness," a glint of _the_ Alice sparked out, "a little. Gave me back some control."

Continuing to plunder Pandora's Biloxi Box, I wanted to know more, "The words you projected on parchment, in the Old Jail when you were with Bella: _You will mate, once and forever, with a woman that will be the culmination of us all. Or our ruination. Swan…Cullen…Volturi?"_

She tightened like a vice, a viper, _sotto voce_, villainous, "I've seen more than one future, Eddie." The narrow aperture of her voice widened just enough to let a light through, "But all of them spin from you and Bella."

This wasn't fucking helping at all! I slammed my flat palms down to the coffee table, stomped my feet into the floor, leaving prints and new cracks on the plasterboard like from a magnitudinous earthquake, "I just need to know I can have her, that I won't kill her, that the Volturi will be defeated!"

Still zoning, the dreaming dryad spliced me further in two, "Those are things you can only answer yourself, Eddie… _But none of us want to perish, it's not our time. _You and Bella are the key to safeguarding this family."

In the background, Em spoke up for the first time, it looked like he'd smoked three joints during our conversation, "Fucking great. It all boils down to Eddie Emo-tits here and Rebel Bella?"

I had to agree. We were screwed, blued, and tattooed. "Fuck, woman, what's your crisis? Why do you plague me so with this shit?"

Junior smoothed her hair from her brow and ran his fingers down her arms, a taint of teasing tickled up her mouth, "Why Eddie, because you're so easy to get a rise out of… at least Bella says so."

_And she was back._

"I'm not done with you," I ground out.

She simply shrugged and stole a kiss from Jazz.

Bubba paced around like a caged bear, mumbling a jumbled mess all rolled up into excessive swearing, "-ehJizzwon'tmind-flangeandFUCK!"

Seemingly exorcised, he jerked out of his cursing coma exclaiming, "Holy fucking buzzkill, Bat Girl! I need the rabbit!"

_Surely not._ "The rabbit?" He was going way too far off the trailer park now, all I could think of was the high-powered, jellied Leo-the-Lop monstrosity that took the place of cock for self-proclaimed pumas, cougars, and saber tooth tigers far and wide.

"The _red and white_ rabbit, _duh_. We need that bad boy," and he raced to his bedroom.

In his hands, held out as if were an offering to the gods, Em returned with his Coke Bottle Bong, a masterpiece to the ganja gods he'd fashioned with all the attention to detail and care he took when carving his Kama Sutra figurines that graced our bookshelves.

"Fuck yes," a relieved echo purred around the room.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor that had had a good hoovering yesterday, Em motioned us to circle 'round. I supplied the pitcher filled halfway with water, Alice pulled out a big, fat, aromatic bud. Jazz flicked his Zippo, emblazoned with the Texas state flag. I steadied the jug as Em plunged the 2-liter down to the bottom. Water slopped, the bowl was lit up against the melted hole near the top of the neck. Slowly, Bubba raised the bottle from the water and we watched the growing cloud of grippe fill the plastic.

Grinning like a schoolboy in sex-ed class seeing his first diagram of female genitalia, Em pursed his lips to the bottle opening, pressed the diaphragm back down into the water, pulsing the smoke up into his mouth while tucking the bowl out and placing his finger over the gap to keep the swill inside.

_Fucking science at work._

We did a few rounds until the big black elephant in the room, namely the possibility of our untimely demise, crept back to its hideout.

Almost.

_Fuck me! I was supposed to be responsible for EVERYONE? I couldn't even get laid these days!_

I remembered how close, tight, sopping, slipping, and sexy my shower had been with Bella last night. I could have had her then. My eyes rained over the popcorn ceiling above and laughter burst out of me at my stupidity. _I was wasting so much time!_

Cheekily, Alice sat up like a popped Jack-in-the-box, "Oh my god, Eddie, did you just giggle?"

A sloppy smile spiffed up my face, "Jesus H. Christ, _no_. Dontcha know, chicks giggle and dicks chuckle? Fuck's sake!"

We didn't even hear the distinguished muted roar of the car pulling up to the porch. We certainly fucking heard the door slam and the huff and the sniffing accompanying Maw Esme into the double wide. "Damn layabouts," she grumbled. Kicking my boots and toeing Em's ears, she ranted, "It's shopping day, y'all. And what do I come to find? Silly as shit and red-eyed… y'all been hittin' the straight snuff!"

Jazz rolled to me, "Busted, man."

I curled up in laughter, "You mean _toasted._"

An expensive leather-shod foot came to rest a bit too close to my head. _Damn skippy._ I looked up the maternal, proud, perfect length of Esme…she was garbed head to toe in tones of lilac, and I just couldn't help myself, "_Purple Haze."_ I'm pretty sure they all giggled while I chortled.

Until Junior pulled me to sitting and thrust his finger at my chest, "_Dazed and Confused."_

_Fuck a nut, was I that obvious?_

Plucking at her pleats, Esme lounged next to Bubba, and the red-and-white rabbit, "I ain't damn near high enough to deal with this. Hit me, son."

Finally pleasantly _relaxed_, Maw reclined on her elbows, "This reminds me of the time I shot-gunned Carl."

_Oh no, please, no._

She carried on, "We'd just moved here and some nice young high schooler paid Carl in weed for spayingMuffy, his kitty."

We all hid our chuckles at that.

"Brahms was playing, and I had my vodka tonic. I was making banana upside-down-cake for the Christ Church fair. That dastardly warshing machine was running and walking across the laundry room floor until I kicked it good. Carl came up the steps, and the cow bell pinged his arrival home."

Taking another pull of high, she belted out four nice rings, her voice like the rasp of a cat's rough tongue, "He sat right down on his leather recliner from Ethan Allen and started rolling one. Crooking his finger, he beckoned me closer until I straddled his lap. _OH! Goodness gracious, _y'all don't need to hear this!"

"No!"

"_Yes."_

"Aw, c'mon, Maw, loosen up."

_Shit almighty._

"Well, he lit the joint and the smell damn near set off the smoke alarms. I wanted to open the porch doors to air the place out, but he held me tight about the waist and set the hot end of the spliff to my lips. I remember being distressed, that blaze too close to my skin, but your father just shook his head and put his hands down lower to keep me close as possible."

The room was silent as we listened to this tale of Maw and Paw. Jizzper and Alice coiled like snakes around each other, Bubba gave me the finger and I mouthed, "_Fuck off, dickhead._"

The smile on Esme's face was far too intimate, "His lips came to mine, clamped the stub, and I felt his tongue in the corner of my mouth urging me to…_blow._"

"_cough _BLOW what?_ cough"_

Esme rallied to crack Em with her strict fist, "The joint, of course."

"I exhaled, the red coal inside me, the wafts filling his mouth and throat and chest. Our eyes locked and lingered as dusty flumes fled like ghostly apparitions from his nostrils, and I sucked that exhaust right up into my own nose."

Gaping faces were glued to her. _Double shotgun?_ Holy fuck.

"That Taylor sure had some good clover, though I don't condone it, of course." She winked and went back to work on the rabbit bong.

I was suddenly sweltering and suffering, I didn't need more pronouncements of sex and affection from the people I loved at this moment, bent as I was on giving it all up to Bella with possibly disastrous results, "You got cotton mouth, Maw? Want a branch and bourbon?"

She caressed my cheek and ruffled my hair, wincing at the wily wilderness of it, "Thanks, honey. And bring me a jam jar of blood too while you're up."

I breathed deeply in the clean air of the kitchen and prepared my mom's cocktail and chaser… two neat jiggers of bourbon to water, and one glass of plump blood warmed to room temperature in the microwave.

I'm pretty sure the CDC would advise heating it up slowly on the hob so as not to lose all the nutrients, but I didn't give a shit. And more than likely, they weren't studying the effects of nuking blood.

I shoulda' just stayed in the kitchen, because assholes were knee-deep discussing me and Bella when I got back.

"Yeah, Eddie just had his first Bella blowjob!" And it wasn't even Alice, it was Bubba! As if it wasn't bad enough she'd caught me chapping the cold club in her powder room… _Beelzebub_, was nothing sacred?

"Uh huh, human head," Jazz concurred.

"Well, I just hope she has good oral hygiene. And I'm glad you found yourself a woman; you best be treatin' her like a lady…givin' as good as you get," Esme sagely advised to the gulps and growing silence like the crickets I wanted to napalm.

The only one unfazed, Maw went further and embarrassed the hell out of me, "Does this mean I can let-up on the Costco bulk Kleenex?" Pennywise to a fault, even when discussing my penis-pounding penchant.

Needing to change the topic, post-fucking-haste, I mentioned the thing that was preoccupying me, aside from Bella's pretty lips wrapped around my wand, "I'm telling her I'm a vampire." All eyes swung to me like I'd fucking magnetized the cunts, and this gaddamn ganja was working on me like Sodium Pentothal.

Shit, that got everyone's attention.

They assembled like this was some kind of round circle intervention, a fucking circle jerk.

"As the matriarch of this family," inhaling deeply and holding it so her voice expelled tight and strained, Esme decided, on the exhale, "I propose a vote."

I sank to the floor and glowered at her and the nodding bobble heads each in turn, "_What?_ No. We're not holding a pretentious fucking symposium on my _love life_," I shook my head emphatically.

Alice parceled, "You mean _death_."

"Life, death, whatever, it ain't happening,"

"Eddie, sugar, we just want to make sure you don't fuck this up," Esme clapped a prim hand over her mouth at her expletive, "_Shit_, this weed's good."

"Be that as it may, a vote? Remember the fucking fiasco of 2000?" _SMACK? _What the hell? She'd just said 'fuck' herself, how had that earned me a cuff broadways? "What?"

"Say that again and I'll wash your rotten mouth out with Grandma's Lye Soap!"

"GOD. As I was saying, show of hands, assholes," I flinched, but Esme was back to the bong, thankfully. "Who remembers the Great Presidential Race of 2000? Al Gore, inventor of the innernet," – snorts and chuckles and even a bray, from Em, ripped through the room – "versus George Wanker Bush."

All hands shot to the air.

Jizzper mocked, "Thank f-, _thank goodness_," I crossed my eyes and gave him the 'V' on the sly, fucking brownnoser, "there wasn't no twitter back then; Palin and Guv suck-my-shaft Sanford would've gotten lost in the knuckle shuffle."

"Right on, braw," Bubba bit out between another hit.

"Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, uncounted votes, missing ballots…" I hoped I'd hit a political nerve.

"Hanging chads," Asteria Alice injected.

"Dingleberries," from Maw, of all fucking people.

"Cocksucker," and now, with Jizz, we were entirely off course.

"Equal Opportunity Fucker," Em winked at Jizz.

"Yeah, Jazz, didn't you have a Chad back in your heyday?" I pushed us off the really bad voting idea with one final heave.

"Ah believe his name was Chazz, in keeping with his South of Broad heritage," the Lonestar State Stag drawled.

"But were his balls hanging?" Em queried.

"Not for long," Jazz laughed!

Looking to Alice, who sat against Jazz's splayed legs, her hands wrapped in his as they shared a roll of weed, I saw she didn't grimace. _Acceptance. _ Total fucking recognition and acceptance. In a very fucked up way, that was what I wanted with Bella.

Not to be waylaid, Maw rallied, "Nice try, Eddie. I call a vote."

_Think fast!_ "Maybe this'll sway y'all. I'm not fuck-" Esme screwed up my ear like the worst damn titty-twist known to mankind, "Sorry!" I slapped her hand away with a boom of granite on marble. "I'll rephrase. I'm not going to _make love_ to Bella until I tell her." Now I was just going for the sympathy vote.

Eyes brightened by bud and, _Jesus, _the idea I'd finally met _my one_, M'Esme declared, "We need Carl."

_Ah, the popular vote._

Jumping up, Alice shouted a bit too enthusiastically, and I sincerely hoped she didn't have a Daddy Complex on top of everything else, "Hang on, I'll get my Crackberry!"

My brow wrinkled, and I spinned another joint to ease the burgeoning tension, "What the fuck's a Crackberry?"

Mumbles made the round:

"Tech-challenged."

"Old school."

"I'll show you a Crackberry," Bubba stood and started lowering his pants down his shiny ass – something no man should ever have to view, "Crack plus _blackberries_ equals?"

A resounding chorus answered, "BLACKBERRY, and cut that shit out, Em!"

With Carl on the mobile, Em stopped mooning us.

Clear as crystal with a much better reception than our landline, Carl sounded slightly menacing, "Let me get this straight. You won't have _relations_," Esme smiled at his term, "with Bella until you fess up."

"Correct, sir," I agreed.

"So what's the damn hold-up?"

"Uh, we're vampires?"

The Nostradamus Nymphette niggled a bit more, "_Yeah, what about those Volturi?"_ as if she were small talking about the Chicago Bears.

"Alice, that you, little one? Well, we'll cross that bridge and sack Rome if it comes to that. All's fair in love and war, after all. For now, let's concentrate on Eddie." _When the hell had he morphed into Doctor Fagface Phil?_

Smartly cutting to the chase, he called order, "All in favor?"

"Ay."

"Yeehaw!"

"Hit that fine piece of human tail already," _A-fuckin'-gain…et tu, Carl?_

"Sold!" Antiques Roadshow hound Esme.

"Do it."

"We got your back, bro," Bubba clinched the poll.

I was pretty fucking sure everyone just voted twice, and sure as shit that wasn't constitutional. But if the Bushes didn't give a fuck, neither did I.

Alice sealed the deal with an almighty squeal, "Let's shoplift!"

The phone disconnected, and we all froze in place like a montage of non-breathing monsters.

_~~ll~~_

Learning that Bella was accompanying M'Esme and Alice on their girls' day out, I managed to beg them into making me their valet for a day. Because, _fuck this shit,_ damn straight I was tagging along. My plans were made, and a shopping trip wasn't going to stand in my way.

A _rattle-clunk-clunk_ brought Bella to me. Dashing to the bathroom, I tried to make sense of my hair and wipe the silly smile off my face at seeing her again. Rage and want and skunk and desire _to just be_ rippled through me.

I didn't want her in the smoke-filled trailer, so I met her outside.

My head was filled with Alice's slew; with one foretaste of Bella that shit just intensified like a bad acid trip. Concentrating on her instead, I relaxed into what I knew – she looked so fuckable, so pretty and fresh in her sundress. I wanted to fall to my knees in gratitude for the mastermind who came up with little straps, deep cut bodices, and flouncy high skirts in summery colors.

And those fucking sandals. _What the hell were they?_ There was no _Queer Eye for the Straight Guy _here_, leave that to the pole-dipper._ Fucking platforms. Wedges? _Whatever_. All I knew was there were ribbons. Fucking gold ribbons leading up from the slim silk of ankles, tied in a bow behind her calves.

I gasped and couldn't tear my eyes away from her feet festooned in fuck-me shoes. I wanted to pop one off between her toes! And lick the threads braided up her legs. Or just lick her legs…at this point, I wasn't choosy.

Groaning, I palmed her ass, and it damn near felt unclothed beneath that wispy skirt, pulling her to my groin, my mouth in a hot kiss. Wet, just fucking wet and randy and wanton, I plundered and she slid back and forth across my tongue. Raggedly, we braced apart.

"Down boy!" Bella laughed.

She fucking loved my untamed reaction.

_Yeah, heel motherfucker!_ I glared at the icy stalactite fast filling up the crotch of my jeans, Bella was gonna' get a crick in her neck staring down at it, as if she could hear my junk screaming, "Suck me, suck me, Bella!"

Gales of gamine giggles interrupted us just in time.

We piled into Esme's vintage roadster**.** Pronounced, pleasant, the quiet coiled between us, flamed by Bella's cunning glances, and our hand holding in the tight backseat turning into sensual caresses; from wrists to elbows, gently touching and raising chills. Over the pads of fingertips and into the palms of hands, we pleasured each other flirtatiously, timidly_**, **_as if we were really our age.

Bella's nipples hardened, and her heart chopped like the Cuisinart I'd watched Piggy Paula Dean use. My leg bounced when she found my knee, then my thigh.

She licked her lips, and I hungered after that action.

Just twenty minutes on 526. I could do this and not ravage her.

But she kept on touching me.

I caught Alice's curt, clipping eyes in the sideview mirror.

I opened my legs further and pushed my knee into Bella's pussy.

She was open and wanting. Just waiting.

Gyrating my musculature, I pressed her clitoris against the scant cloth refraining me.

Her hand gripped hard on my dead femoral artery.

_Did she understand the stillness in my veins yet?_

I grabbed the back of her neck.

She pushed on my obvious erection.

Panting filled the stifled air.

Alice turned on the radio.

I tuned it out.

"Baby, please," I pleaded, pushed, and wanted with my mouth, my cock in place of my clothed knee.

Into my lips**, **she turned from my neck to my mouth, "Please what, honey?"

I grabbed her hand and made her cone around my piece and played two fingers against her labia, melting to the warmth inside her not-there g-string.

A honk, a cuss, a pronouncement, "Okay, kids! We're here!" Esme slid into a space skillfully.

Anyone but her would've had trouble parking a shopping trolley in the narrow spot.

_Citadel Mall._ Yeah, _great_, just like Bella's damn garrison mind. And I had a feeling I was going to wish for a fortress to seclude myself from the consequences of my upcoming confession.

Unrolling myself from Bella and the backseat, I commanded my cock to stand down again. We were in a public place, _not that it had ever stopped me before._ But this was Bella, and she was different and good, dirty as hell…but so pure at the same time. And she was going to be the death of me and my rupturing dick. Or she was going to kill me when she found out.

I took her hand and tugged her out of the Merc, placed it in the crook of my elbow, leaned down to brush my lips to her delicate cheek and lightly suck her earlobe, "So, what brings you here?"

Her breath shook a bit, flustered by my attentions, "I need a dress for graduation."

_Thank fuck!_ Maybe there was a god if this meant I wasn't going to be squiring Bella around Victoria's Secret for lingerie, because then all bets _would_ be off. _Graduation?_ Shit-on-a-shingle, I just hoped she'd still be talking to me then.

Conspiratorially, she kissed the corner of my mouth and softly spoke, "And Miss Esme needs a Jean Intervention. Someone needs to get her out of those woobies!"

I swung Bella over a clump of…_hair?_...plastered to the tarmac.

"What the Hail Mary is that?" She wrinkled her nose.

I gingerly toed _it_ with my unlaced Timberlands, "Looks like a hair weave."

"Guess one doesn't leave Flayva Cuts in one piece," Bella laughed.

I agreed, "Best stick to Mookie's Barbershop."

Hollister was our first destination, that overpriced clothiers frequented by kids with free reign over daddy's credit card who were too weak to recognize their lemming mentality.

Alice chose an overpriced black t-shirt and Esme picked up a pair of jeans that were heralded as being _tight and sassy_ as opposed to _apple-bagger frumpies_.

My moneywise honey sneered at the prices.

"See anything you like, Bella? I'd be more than happy to grab it for you," the fey filcher offered.

"These clothes are really a bit too trendy for my tastes, Alice, and I couldn't repay you anyway," Bella thanked Alice.

I butted in, "Uh, I don't think she was saying she'd pay for them."

Alice squinted at me then gathered up three more shirts, quickly and silently ripping off the security tags and stuffing them in her huge monstrosity of a bag, half-inching the goods before Bella even batted an eye.

The salespeople were oblivious.

Esme saw her, though. "Honey, I can purchase those."

A titter escaped Alice's crooked mouth, "So can I. That's not the point."

_No, it wasn't_. Stealing was like Xanax to her, a coping mechanism for the brutal things I'd witnessed in her past. Wasn't like the brittle bitch could just cut herself or something.

"Oh, Esme, don't you worry that I'll get caught. I could rob a nun of her rosary and a priest of his cassock before they could say 'Boo!'"

Maw countered, "Well, maybe they just don't have very good shoplifting detection instructions at the Vatican, dear."

Alice's peal of laughter cut the tension, and she left the store with her loot while Esme paid for her jeans.

"Where to, love?" I wanted some alone time with Bella and hoped to hell the precious little pincher would take the hint and spare me.

"Parisian?" she named one of the upscale department stores.

Thank the demons below, Alice tromped off to raid some more shops with Esme, her probation officer, in tow.

Inspecting the dresses hanging in swishes of rich colors, Bella frowned at the price tags.

Stroking her neck, I reached over her to pluck out a fragile, buttery yellow concoction that reminded me of the sundress she'd worn the day of the Strawberry Festival when I first asked her to the Movies on Marion Square. The cost was ridiculously astronomical and Bella's brow furrowed further.

"I'd love to help you pay for whatever you choose, love," I fingered the gauzy fabric, imagining her flesh inside.

Turning into me, Bella rasped my cheek and played her thumb over my mouth, "I'd like that. But only if you help me decide."

_Yes!_ Did this mean I'd get to go in the changing room with her? _No! No, no._ That was a bad fucking idea. All those mirrors, a nearly nude Bella; my nudging shaft was already crying out with the idea of such close quarters! Reflection upon reflection of Bella undressing, with me behind her… I could already feel her tits in my hands as I hefted them, watching her nipples darkening under my fingers.

Snapping her fingers, Bella called me back to reality, looking pleased with herself as if she knew what I'd been daydreaming about. By the stiff boner in my jeans, she probably did.

Selecting three dresses that looked acceptably demure with a hint of sexy, Bella checked the seams, closures, and cloth with a trained eyed – _well, she didn't want to end up with an off-the-rack, pre-stained, Monica Lewinsky original, did she?_ – before beckoning me to the dressing rooms.

She was shown into a room by a middle-aged, heavy-set saleswoman wearing a measuring tape around her shoulders. I had half a mind to borrow it to calculate just how fucking big and beefy my cock had grown at the very idea of Bella getting naked behind closed doors four steps away from me.

Tilting my head, I could see her feet bared from the sandals… those goddamn streamers floating to the floor.

Her own light dress floated down her calves, and she lifted first one then the other foot from it.

I groaned slowly and gripped the arm of the chair creaking beneath my straining body.

_Oh yeah, she was damn near naked now._

I stood and started pacing, listening to cloth climbing over skin, a zipper, a couple of sighs, and perhaps the rustling of her breasts inside the bodice.

With my eyes closed and my thoughts heated, I heard a throat clear. The plus-sized customer rep was back, and she was thinking, "_Oh mah goodness. That boy done look like he's about to beat down that door to get to his woman. Mighty fine specimen of a man, too."_

Shaking herself from her dreamy state, she knocked on the partition, "Everything alright in there, miss?" Her twang was like a glockenspiel, tinny and tight, off-key. Then her pitch sounded like din underwater, chugging slowly, because Bella came out of the dressing room, and _what the fuck was that?_

Most unholy of motherfucking creations!

The yellow cream fantasy certainly hadn't looked like that on the hanger.

Wet. Dream. _In a dress._

Could that thing even be called outerwear?

The material accordioned over her curves like my own crucible hands. It held her like a heavenly chalice. _Holy fucking Grail._ It dipped in at her high, slim waist, cupped her tits and dove down between them with little ruffly things, sat on her shoulders with the tiniest sleeves accenting the rounds. And the skirt! Lucifer save me! It was pleated or something, drifting in layers to two inches above her knees and of course she'd put on her sandals again, just to torment me more. _Of course._

The fucking thing made her legs endless, her thighs toned, and the muscles in her calves tight.

I licked my lips and strolled around her, my hand shook as it barely touched her.

"I take it you approve?" Her hands skimmed down her sides to rest on her thighs, and her brown, twinkling eyes knew what the she was fucking doing to me – _Marilyn Monroe, eat your heart out!_

I tickled the textile at the base of her spine and uttered, low and harsh, "We'll fucking take it."

Bella swatted my arm, "That isn't exactly polite, Eddie."

The saleslady was gawking at our display. I bowed my head and tipped my imaginary hat, "Sorry, ma'am. I like the dress _very much_. Wrap it up."

_~~ll~~_

Without further incident or cussing, we made it out of Parisian. I'd had just enough time to work myself down from spontaneous ejaculation while Bella had changed and we paid.

Grasping the garment bag in one hand and half of Bella's ass in the other, I asked, "Let me buy you some lunch?"

"Why? So I can watch you _not_ eating again?"

I leered at her, "No, so I can watch _you_ eat, and we need to talk."

She nodded her head.

We passed up the Marble Slab Creamery, as if I needed one more reminder of my eternally dead nature.

Settling on The Dog and Duck, I propelled Bella inside and asked for a secluded booth.

A Ladson-type waitress introduced herself… she was a big girl with black eyeliner in two punchy lines under and over each eye so she resembled a raccoon. She handed first Bella then me a menu, "Hey, hons, I'm Trudy! Y'all just wave me down if you need anything, and I'll be back for your order in a few minutes."

This was stupid. I knew it was. What the fuck was I thinking? To tell Bella in a public place –_ I was a fucktard because all I could think was safety in numbers and maybe she wouldn't try to rip my nuts off out in the open_ – yeah, damage control.

But now, my throat was so fucking fixed I could hardly breathe, and every muscle in my body went on high alert.

Spinning beermats, drumming my fingertips, tapping my foot and occasionally prodding Bella's, I was just putting off the inevitable.

_What if this was the end?_

Fuck, I needed to grow a pair of cajones already.

Trudy came back with a glass of water for me and a tall sweet tea for Bella. She took our order, juggling her pencil between her lips and the pad against her gigantic bosom. "Okay, hon, I got you down for a fried scallop basket, heavy mayo on the slaw. And for you," she looked at me, "Nothing?"

"That's right."

"Be about fifteen minutes, y'all holler, okay?"

Bella acted fast, trapping my fidgeting hands in the heat of her own, "You're really not getting anything?"

Sitting back, I tried for nonchalance, "As I said before, I just like to watch you _eat_," a salacious grin widened my lips.

Lowering her eyes over dilating depths, she moaned, "And I like it when you eat…_me."_ The last was said so quietly. It hit me so fucking hard in the groin!

She was doing my nut in!

Linking our fingers, Bella plied, "You said we need to talk."

I assented. Silently.

"You're procrastinating," I looked into her eyes and she became austere, "Alright. I'll start. I'm a virgin."

I about jumped out off the creaky leather booth in self-congratulations, but managed to check myself. And then I remembered, and then I wondered, and knew…she was telling me this so I would open up about my own secret. What the hell could I say? _Well, Bella, it also starts with a 'V' and sounds like campfire'?_

Fuck it.

"And I'm a vampire," I blurted.

Extra-sweet tea fountained out her nose and foamed down her chin. _Dog and Duck? More like Duck and Dodge._

Yep, definitely a mood killer. But I'd thought I could just slide it in.

While she gulped and her eyes teared, I took a napkin from the canister and wiped her face kindly, "So you're shocked?"

"YES! _Wait_, a vampire… like Dracula?" Bella sat away from me.

I couldn't not smile, my emotions ricocheted left and right, "You know he was never real, right?"

Plucky and encouraged, she quipped, "And you are?"

"I think you know just how real I am, Bella. You've touched me, kissed me, nearly made love to me. You've enlivened me! Yes, I'm real." My heart was on my sleeve and bleeding, begging.

"You're a vampire," she fiddled with the damp serviette, folding it into wet origami, not meeting my eyes.

"But you knew!" I tried to hold her hand, but she shrank back. My jaw clamped, "The mind reading, my quickness, the cold of my touch," I leaned over the sticky table again and touched her chin to draw her wary eyes to mine. Murmuring, "My strength. _Love_, you knew something."

Tossing her head out of my hold, she braided up my fingers, rolled her eyes and exhaled loudly.

Waltzing up as if on cue, Trudy was tableside, "Hey, just give me ten minutes. That lady over there," she jerked her head to the opposite booth, "just broke her waters!"

If I wasn't feeling sick already, I surely was now.

In five minutes, a family of four was hustled to the scene of the flood. The youngest grabbed at his glass of ice water before his momma slapped his hands away from it, digging out the Germ-X to rid the surrounds of bacteria, "Don't drank the water, it's nasty!"

"Not as nasty as the amniotic fluid you're sitting on," Bella mumbled.

Five minutes. Five-fucking-minutes.

She's looked to me and glanced away.

Trudy delivered her fried basket, and she picked at it.

I was dying, _again._

"Please, baby. All the innuendoes! _Are you just a man, why don't you eat, do you even need to breathe…_"

Dusty brown, she met my eyes, negated every emotion inside her, "It's one thing to be _different_ or talented. But I just thought you'd come in contact with radioactive material or something, you know, like Chernobyl. It's another creature _entirely_ to be a vampire! "

Pounding my fist against my nuclear noggin, I bit, "Chernobyl? That was 1986, and I'm only seventeen."

"Good point," she slurped up a golden scallop and dipped a fry in ketchup. She pointed the fritter at me in accusation, "But you're immortal, right? So, how old are you, exactly?

My hands dug through the tossed fall of my hair, "I was born, as a human, in 1901**. **I was turned in 1918**."**

Tallying the math rapidly, at least the tax payers dosh wasn't going to waste, "You're 108???!!!_HOLY SHIT!_ That puts a whole new spin on the term _My Old Man._ You're old enough to be my great-great-grandfather!" An hysterical edge cratered her tone.

_Like I needed a reminder._

Flagging down Trudy, I ordered a PBR.

She ate another critter and looked at me sidelong, "You look good for your age though."

_It couldn't be this easy._

"Are you scared?" My lips were pursed in agony.

"I'm…totally fucking stunned, Eddie. Completely. Am I scared_? I don't know what I am right now._ But you've had ample time to kill me, if that was your game. Besides, one of my closest friends comes from a long line of werewolves. I'm pretty sure he's got my back."

I shifted around, "Uh, yeah, we're mortal enemies and all." My eyes widened in mock dread. "Of course, technically Jacob's a-"

"Shape Shifter. Blah bla bla. Yes, I know."

I held onto my grin at her cheekiness, "You have questions?"

"Okay. We both know you can come in uninvited. So that myth's busted – _stalker," _she breathed. "What else is there? Fill me in while I think on it."

The spark in her eyes told me I wasn't out of the woods, "I can't cry – not that I ever fucking would, can't sleep, and I don't have functioning semen."

Huge and doughy, her eyes took on the meaning of my words, "_Oh good god, _you can't cry? You never sleep? Not even in a coffin? _Wait!_ You don't cum?"

I launched into a laugh, "You know I cum, love. It's just… _venom_ as opposed to sperm. But don't worry, it's negligent in that amount, and impotent, as it were. And coffins? _No_."

She chewed on her shellfish irritably, "What about garlic? Holy water? The cross?"

She swallowed when I fingered her throat from her chin to her collar bone, "I've been in a church with you…did it seem I was plagued by anything other than the touch of your skin, the kiss of your lips?"

Sultry passion circled between us again. _Thank fuck._

_Or not._

"Oh no, buster. You're not going to distract me that easily! _Hold up_, can you hypnotize me?"

Chagrined, I glanced away, gnawing my inner cheek, "Not exactly."

"But your looks. That's to lure females in?" _Fuck._ She was too fast a learner.

My ego rebounded, "You think I'm attractive?"

Munching on French fries, she made me wait, and I squirmed. "You're supernaturally sexy, I'll grant you that. But truth be told, you're nothing but a bona fide deadneck!"

My cock soared again. My heart was still beseeching.

"There's more."

She downed her saccharine tea and finished up her scallops. Shoving away the basket stamped with a red and white tablecloth pattern, she assented.

"Your blood is fucking incredible!"

She almost shot off the bench.

"Please, wait," I had to tell her. "To me, you're what's called _la tua cantante._ You're my singer. My mistress and chanteuse. The scent of you makes me feel more alive than I've ever been!"

Red glimmered against my irises, "I could only ever want you, in this way… as my woman."

She quavered and inspected the ticket dropped off by Trudy, "Your _cantante, _eh?"

"LTC, we like to call it," I indulged her.

"_LTC_, huh? Y'all have got your own vampire acronyms?" she looked vaguely amused.

"More like text messaging lingo, or you know, for tweeting."

She crossed her arms over her breasts and scowled, "You want my blood."

I couldn't deny it. "I have wanted to taste you, yes. But I want you to live more. _I want to…_FUCK! I want to love you, Bella."

The hereafter hearkening of her heart heated like the rosiness to her chest, face, and ears.

"The call of your heart is bigger than the blood it holds. The sensation of wanting to imbibe you is nothing, _nothing_, beneath the way you, ALIVE, regenerate me."

"This makes no sense. I'm sorry," my eyelids weightily lifted to her suspicious visage.

"I'm almost immune to the temptation of your flow," I said, wryly.

Bella tore another napkin in half and raised her empty glass to Trudy, "So, you decided to tell me you're a blood-sucking vampire-"

I interrupted, "Well, technically we're vegetarians – wildlife and all that. Not that I haven't enjoyed the straight stuff." She paled, and I bit my tongue.

"Oh, this just gets better'n better. You thought it was high time you came clean. _And then what?"_

I curled my fingers into the edge of the table, leaving my fingerprints for Bella to see my power, "We put it to a vote." I peered at her and scratched my temples, wondering if a vampire could go gray after all, because, by the looks of it I was about to find out.

If looks could kill, I'd be ten feet under. She held her voice steady, steely, deadly and low, "We? WE! You mean all you Cullens are-"

I choked.

She noticed.

She harangued in disbelief, "_Everyone?"_

Chagrined, I blew the chaff of my hair away from my eyes but remained silent while she worked through it, "I guess I just thought y'all were some weird, creepy, unnaturally blessed, good-looking inbreds or something."

Her muted proclamation was nearly funny enough to make me laugh.

Until a subtle hurt flooded her eyes, "Miss Esme? Carl?"

"Yeah," I whispered, wanting to reach over and hold her hand, assure her we were just the same people she'd come to know no matter what fucking godforsaken genetics we were made of.

"Alice?"

I nodded, my eyes boring into hers, I knew what was next.

The truth settled over her like a shroud, aghast she asked, "Even Rose?"

I jumped around the table and climbed in next to her, my arms caging her to the apex of the booth to contain her; comfort her? "Her too."

A shrinking sunflower, her hand flew to her mouth. Grabbing my biceps, my skin crowing at her touch, my heart aching at the pain she clearly wanted to precipitate as between her fingers she accused, "It's not just you," she shook her head. "_All of you._ Every single friggin' one of you!" Her nails sheared to my skin, her fingers flew down to my wrists, her knee raised to my crotch, desperate to inflict damage, "This ain't all hunky dory, Eddie."

No matter how much I wanted to hold her, console her, reassure her, I couldn't. She was one step closer to panic. Taking deep breaths, she slurped the remaining ice from her cup, chomping on the melting cubes. A terse calm invaded her, "So what else aren't you telling me?"

My forearms to the table, I glanced at her burdened profile, "I'm color blind."

Rich harsh laughter and her neck jerked back, and her eyes glowed, "No you are _not!_ Of all the goddamn things… aren't you supposed to be perfect?_"_

I wanted to kiss her cheek, and hug her. Instead I lightly traipsed my fingerpads over her knuckles, "I think we both know I'm nothing if not flawed, Bella." The most imperfect vampire, I was a fucking mess, always had been. Only she had made things seem like they could possibly be good, all right, _hunky dory._

Her hair curtained around her face as she agreed with that. "You've got some nerve, Eddie."

My head hung like from the gallows, a place I was used to, "Forgive me. I've never told anyone this." I wrapped my hand around hers, feeling the heat and the thrum of her pulse.

She sucked in a breath before shoving at me to move. I stood and paid the bill.

Her posture was immaculate.

I stood taller.

Straighter.

_It was done._

At the door, she whirled to me like a force of nature or one of the fucking Furies! Wildly unleashing all the insanity I'd plied her with; the pummeling of her fists glancing off me, "How could you?"

Damp umber and wide open were her eyes and lips.

Securing her wrists, I bound them to my chest, the cavern empty of all rhythm, "I have _never_ felt this way about anyone before." I leveled to her face and made her look at me, "You needed to know."

Of their own temerity, on impulse alone, her hands fought into my hair and yanked me closer. Sugary nectar slid against her breath, "Kiss me."

Wrenching her to me, I kissed her with every fucking thing! Wet. Hard. Open. Knowing. Hating. _Hating myself._

We crawled into a corner and heaved against each other to the pounce of words:

"Why?"

"Why you?"

"Now?"

"I want you."

I slid my mouth, grunting into the baseline of her throat, reiterating my words that seemed so pointlessly naive three hours before, "Please, _baby,_ please."

She nipped my chin and jerked my hair and glared at me, "You could have killed me."

Desperately, I shook my head, "You should never die, Bella."

I pushed into her. Wrapped my warped arms around her. _Close. Closer._ An arm strengthened to the wall behind her, another abyssal kiss to her mouth. A struggle to remain gentlemanly, to safeguard her from myself.

She hooked my shoulders, "I need space." Even while her hands held me tightly as possible.

I heard her phone vibrating before she felt it.

Digging in her purse or handbag or clutch or whatever the fuck the thing was, she pulled out her cell phone and read the text. I tried not to be a Nosy Parker, but I wanted to know who the hell was messaging her.

Pushing me away, she turned to the outside doors of the mall just as the bass-booming Wolfmobile pulled up curbside.

_Oh, this was too cunting much!_

The fetid Fido ducked his head and loped out, making his way to us.

His large smile dented with Bella's pinpoint glare, "Don't you grin at me! I'm not exactly thrilled with you either, Jacob!"

An octave higher, he whined, "Why? What'd I do?"

Deliberately, Bella blamed, "You _knew_."

I wanted to gloat, but I was really fucking surprised he hadn't told her all this time… and pissed she was going off with him, of all the fucking people… _or animals._

She made her way to the half car/half truck, and we followed like minions in her wake. It felt like a fuckin' funereal march.

He, of course, was less gallant than me, "So you called me because you prefer wolf to leech?"

"No, Jacob. I called because I needed a ride, and I know you're always cruising up and down Sam Rittenberg Boulevard so you'd be close."

He heeled like my cock never did.

Crushed, hollow, and still hugely horny, I watched the stink-ass motherfucker get back in his ride, leaving us some privacy. "I would have gotten you home."

Her arms folded up around my neck, "I know." I lowered until our foreheads met. Our lips were _so close._ "I just can't face everyone right now, _knowing._"

I held her face, "_I would never hurt you. WE_ would never hurt you!"

Her eyes sank and rose, and sank again, resolved on my mouth. "I'm just… _I can't._ I don't… I don't think I owe you an explanation, but I would never hurt you either." I leaned fully into her throat. Locked her to me. "Jacob knows things about your kind. He's like you. Right now I can't talk to you… I don't know how to be… _because I want you, all of you… and this pull,"_ she undulated into me to emphasize her position, "makes it impossible to _think._"

"Don't think then."

She sipped sideways along my lips, "I have to."

I nodded and let her go, all but her hands, trembling like mine. Bending at the knee, I pleaded, "Just take everything he says with a grain of salt. And ask me if you doubt what I feel. _Call me, please_."

I walked her to the cur's car and placed her inside.

"I will, Eddie."

I kissed her palm and each of her knuckles and the fingertips of the hand I dreaded letting go.

She untangled from me.

I closed the door slowly, silently.

My downcast eyes met long, laced, black leather boots. _Alice._

Esme took up my arm and denounced Alice's scheming, "She pulled a _dine-and-dash."_

Slick and slippery, the thief in question seized my other arm, "More like _drink-and-dash._"

Maw wondered, "Where's Bella?"

Every sinew tightened, and they heeded my staunchly withheld growl, "She found another ride home."

"You told her."

"Yeah." Monosyllabic, I made it obvious I wasn't in the mood to talk. Most definitely not to the miniature Mod Squad.

I looked to my hand, the plastic garment bag swishing. _Ha ha ha, I was left holding the bag!_ Bella'd forgotten her dress.

Every fucking thing mocked me on the desolate drive to Cainhoy. First there was the yuppy subdivision, Preservation Place cosied right up to J. Henry Stuhr Funeral Home.

Church signage followed. I used to have a hearty, hearty laugh at all the slogans and…. now I was beginning to worry about the fate of my soul. A place of worship at every goddamn half-step and intersection in this Southern Holy City. I cursed the blessed spires that littered the skyline of downtown Charleston. I felt like I needed to cross myself, say three Pater Nosters and beg for divine intervention with each fabled block we passed, and with every stone-cold cube of me that had unfrozen in Bella's presence.

_Don't give the devil a ride, or he'll want to drive._

Yeah.

_Triumph equals Try + UMPH!_

Obviously.

And the clincher: Reserve your seat in eternity…_smoking or non-smoking?_

_Sure felt like I was in Hell, thanks JC._

God, my feeling for Bella was like a swarm of the tiny red fireants whose mounds sanded over our frontyard. Little biters, fiery clamps, toxin raising, pus-filled, volcanic blemishes. _Termite bastards. _My regard for her stole into me, first with a nibble, then with a furious fire racing up in anaphylactic reaction, swelling my cock, engorging the dead lead, ashy heap of my heart, barrenness brought back to life by a new poison… _love?_

Two clicks from Luxury Hollows Trailer Park, and I saw it. A bumper sticker on the Dodge Ram ahead: _Pluff mudd…the goo that holds the earth together._ I think I'd just fucking discovered Bella was the glue binding me to something more.

* * *

~C'mon, this is Rebella…there's no way in hell she'd be just be _la dee da, my boyfriend, his entire family, and my closest friend are all vampires_. **Please tell us what you think!** ~

Rie: Yeah, so that was kinda' long.

Eddie: I hear tell they like it _long_.

Rie: One might even say it's enormous!

Eddie: It always is, Rie.

Rie: Well, I wasn't referring to your manhood, dear. And why is it you always call everyone else _darlin'_ but not me?

Eddie: We-ell, you're a little bit too hardcore. Them others, the readers and reviewers and my dirty Double Wide ladies…they're just sweet, sassy, and sexy.

Rie: OH! I definitely take offense to _that_!

Eddie: *chagrined…_a bit_* Rie, _darlin'_, you fuckin' scare me.

So, I'm going to pimp myself :). I just started a new fic, _**Youth without Age and Life without Death**__: _Nee Eliza, a Gypsy girl, Elizabeth Masen bore a Handsome Son and ensured his immortality. A fairytale set to life in Edward's dream of Isabella and her enchanting touch. A rich tale of bewitching love stories and passionate history.

I also wrote an o/s over the holidays called _**Surrender**_: 'And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.' Edward left. Bella changed. He came back. Who will surrender? Bitterly cold, achingly ardent.

The next _**Rebelward Without a Cause**_ outtake I believe will be written by me. The character in question will be a surprise, so make sure to alert that too!

_Rie~_


	16. Whack It or Wrap It

Miss V totally takes beta'ing to a whole new level! Man, she's fucking harsh, and just what I need. Ta as well to Viola Cornuta for threatening to cuff Eddie when he misbehaves and for rattling out general geniusness at all hours of the day and night.

For the most unholy first 2010 h00rdown, I gotta hug and love on all the coquettes at the DW! Special gropes to 'Gayle' who helps get me through my daily life and to Claudia for busting my chops.

Cheers Ape, Vi, Di for the clever condom chat.

**Disclaimer: **Really. DC's is so mine and Eddie's. Canon type stuff and characters (sort of) belong to SM.

You know, before you read this, you really should read the latest _Rebelward Without a Cause: Sweetgrass and Sassafras_. _Really._ I wrote it, isn't that enough? It's the bridge to this chapter and features Mama Brown and a slice of real (well, minus the vamps and shapeshifters) lowcountry life. JS.

~~Just three things to say (har bloody har har): #1. You will laugh. #2 you might get fidgety with some angst. #3. Bring panties. In fact, buy you some new ones~~

* * *

**Whack It or Wrap It**

I felt like my heart had been mashed to a bloody pulp again. And as if someone had taken steel-capped boots to my cock.

The fucking beast of a thing was actually flaccid for a change, but that certainly didn't make me feel better.

_I was Eddie Cock-hard Cullen._

And a petite human woman had made it past my carbide defense to worm her way into my… _emotions._

I needed a drink, some blood, I suddenly wanted to _need_ to bust my spooge out my shaft, but for once, I didn't.

I wanted peace and quiet and solitude.

And that sure as fuck wasn't happening.

All the friggin' lights were on at the DW when Maw turned the corner, crunching over a recent pile of trash left by my neighbor, the Penske-driving Prick from Texas.

The wasters inside were still at it, recently joined by none other than Carl, the lubriciously lubed-up, large animal vet.

And Rose.

By the looks of the '_I'd really like to rip your useless head from your shoulders, asshole'_ glare she stabbed me with, I was guessing she was none too happy with me outing her like a glad-boy on Duval Street in Key West.

_Whatever._

Alice and Maw plonked down into the pow-wow of potheads.

I slammed the door near off the frame and paced the perimeter of the room.

Carl had a full array of Bugles, those crunchy corn chips, stuck to the ends of his fingertips, just sniffing, in full munchie mode.

With his usual audacity, Em boomed, "Yo, _Spanky!_ Came clean, did ya'?"

I gave him the finger, "Shut the hell up, Buckwheat."

"I don't think he looks near to _coming_ anything?" Alice jeered at my crotch that was decidedly _not_ straining my button flies for possibly the first time ever.

"Eat me, Alfalfa," I warned.

Goddamn fucking peacekeeping Froggy waved his arm around in the smoke, "Let up on the man. He's had a _hard_ day."

I'd never wanted to pummel Jazz as I did at that moment.

"Good thing his dick's dead, 'cause I have half a mind to yank that useless appendage off and stuff it nuts deep down his throat!" Rose ranted.

"_Darla_," Bubba breathed as if bowing down before Pan-Hellenic Aphrodite.

His untapped ash fell to the floor unnoticed by all but Maw, and she was suddenly on her feet, with a freakin'…_DustBuster?_...vacuuming up the soot and yipping and nipping away about, _"Filthy, dirty boys. Thought I raised y'all ta' respect your belongings…no need for this sort of grubbiness…."_

All together now, "PIT BULL PETE!"

I smirked and tried not to laugh and shifted Bella's garment bag to my other hand, thereby sending up a whiff of sexy babe scent splicing through the reefer madness and felt, _finally_, the throb in my aroused cock pulsing back to life.

_Spanky it was._

I left them with Carl laughing and whinging like my bed was gonna' soon as I had my hand wrapped around my beef, "What about me?"

_~~ll~~_

Some kind soul flashed their lights to give me the 'Pig In Our Midst' alert. Fate was such a fickle fucking bitch, and she definitely had it in for me; I had no doubt it'd be Chief Chiclet-teeth waiting 'round the next corner. Did he think he was Little Jack Horner?I was Little Jack Horny; he could keep his Christmas Pie**.**I slowed to a human crawl, figuring I was already on his shit list, imagining Bella's recent conversation with him might have gone something like this:

"_What's up, Bella?"_

"_Oh, you know that Eddie Cullen you always warned me off of?"_

_He'd let out a belch and crack another Schlitz, "No good for nuthin' Cullen?"_

"_Yeah, that's the one. Well, guess what?"_

_Charlie would raise one fat eyebrow above the tipped-back bottle._

"_He's a vampire on top of everything else!'_

I pounded the steering wheel. Because, if she did forgive me -- which I was beginning to doubt as she hadn't contacted me for three long, infuriating, gigantic gherkin' jerkin' and wasted days -- I'd have to try to win over swiney Swan.

I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Well, I was _cumming_, of course. A man, vampire, _whatever_, has needs.

Additionally, I still had Bella's dress, the one she'd worn for all of ten minutes.

After my brief and pretty friggin' horrifying lapse into droopy noodle-dickhood – _I was revolted to remember _– I was absolutely back on top, tugging/pulling/rubbing-one-off form with that buttery vision as prime masturbation material. By some heroic act of restraint I'd managed not to toss one off right on her fragranced, yellowy, fluttery sundress. I mean, how tacky would that be? _Yes, Clinton, I'm talking to you._

All in all, I was pretty damn proud of myself for managing to direct the splashes of spunk in the opposite direction. I merely fondled the fabric of the deriding dress that never failed to get a rise out of me; I had _some _self-restraint. Besides, then I'd have Esme the laundress and her fish wife's haranguing to deal with. I just wasn't going there.

When I'd come out of my den of dick-dealing and hand chapping just before racing to my Bronco to find my wench-of-choice, I found the Little Rascals still fucking at it. Their herbage marathon was momentous! Billows of wacky baccy made blue clouds of the closed-in, muggy air.

Alice had popped up like a jaded jack-in-the-box, "What's up, Creamsicle? Off to stalk your woman again?" Her perfectly arched eyebrows shot up to shorn hair that would never grow back, as black as her peplum blouse and jet skirt meeting laddered tights.

I drank heartily from Carl's coagulated delights and glared while back-handing my mouth, "Cryptic crow."

She'd whooped and sat straighter, still fucking digging in the cushions for loose change, spare parts, a leftover doobie, "Cromagnon."

Jizz had sighed when she twirled his goldilocks around her fingers, and alternated between biting his toothpick and sucking on grass, "Hey now, _I think_ Bella's his magnum opus!"

_Well fuck me straight, that was a bit deep, even for my brutal bohemian brother._ Everyone stared at him while he simply shrugged his shoulders and bent low to kiss Alice thoroughly.

Rose had intercepted, "Need a Magnum there, eh stud?"

My brow tucked together…I wasn't even thinking about sex at this precise moment. _'Was I?' _ I questioned my cock and it jumped up like one of Pavlov's dogs, growing stiff and unbearable at the idea of fucking Bella. _Fuck_. Well, even if I was, I didn't need no dick-covers, my shit was known to be as much a wasteland as me.

I'd adjusted myself and tossed the empty plasma bag into the trash, listening to Jazz throwback to Rosie, "Hey Day Stripper, toss me the lighter."

Emmett was still bug-eyed over the bilious brownie's latest dig, "Yeah, sister_, crowbar_." He grinned like Groucho Marx and palmed his manmeat, thereby deflating my own.

Not to be outdone, I'd pointed my finger at Alice, "Bedeviled Crone."

She shot back, "Chronologically impaired imbecile! Time's a'wasting, and Bella's waiting."

Making the universal sign to 'fuck off', with my forearm laid across my opposite elbow and adding a two-fingered 'V' for good measure, I wandered to my truck, shaking my head all the way.

And now I was headed back to Mama Brown's for my stakeout.

This was such a fucking crock of shit.

Three days of silence was more than I could cope with.

Enough of this bullshit, I'd spilled my frosty guts, I was pacing and morose and about ready to kill any Bobby-Jo or Billy-Ray who crossed my path, I was that fucking cantankerous. This wasn't who I was anymore! I grabbed the steering wheel and gunned the engine to make way to her faster.

I turned up the radio, but even the screech of hair-metal-heads Quiet Riot with _Cum On, Feel the Noize_ couldn't dim my thoughts. I'd been so lonely for a ridiculous number of decades only to become a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-never-fuckin'-care Johnny Reb, and now I felt nothing more than a gutted man whose head had been turned, and whose heart was beating like pulpy, putrid flesh on his sleeve!

I _wanted_ acceptance.

I _wanted_ to be worthy.

And I was already so far gone and ballooning on confusing emotions for Bella that, if she decided I wasn't worth the risk, I'd go on an almighty killing spree as a means to bring the Volturi down on me. I'd get myself murdered by the long arm of the immortal Italian cuntnuggets as befitted the fiend in me.

_I'd never wanted any of these motherfuckin' complications!_

Ornery as a black bear tangling with a Tomahawk Trap, horny as a grizzly woken from hibernation, I thought back to what I'd witnessed of Rosie and Bella in recent days.

First, Bella wouldn't talk to her. And I really hated myself for driving a wedge between their friendship. Then, slowly like mist rolling back towards the East off the white capped crests of the Atlantic, Bella had come around. Several days after my unveiling, those two were thick as thieves while Bella remained closed off and seemingly highly suspicious of me!

Immobilized and increasingly fucked off, I returned daily to Mama Brown's to wait and watch and wonder what the hell was wrong with _me_. She could befriend a most unnatural pack of honky tonk hoodoo hounds, she'd started talking to Rosie again…_what the hell about me? _She'd rocked my blighted soul off its crumbling foundation!

I drove past Feather Your Nest Antiques, a bit bemused by their latest sign: _40% off Vintage Linens!_

Shouldn't they be giving that shit away for free? Who the hell wanted dead folk's sheets? And fuck, if that's the case, then I'd fucking sell them mine!

Stupid, goddamned, godforsaken place.

The dress provided me with an excuse to see her. Graduation was fast approaching, and I'd determined, today, to stop being such a pussy and demand she talk to me.

I just hadn't managed to git outta' my truck yet.

Mama had counseled me to wait, and she'd made my lurking pleasant as possible, having her boy Caleb make sure I was topped up with libations. Only, for all his pole bean tallness, he was a bit too slow on his long grasshopper legs in replenishing my refreshments.

Tonight I'd packed a cooler.

It sat beside me in Bella's place. I drank, and waited to see her. To talk to her.

My gut clenched.

I closed my eyes.

A burst of noise made me open them and look left.

To a tan cargo van decked out in little multi-colored pom-pom curtains hanging behind the slitty windows, the back doors opened over two thick ropes trapping a mess of lawn maintenance equipment inside. Coming to a screeching halt, the shrill din inside the Mariachi Mobile stopped.

Four Mexicans climbed out and made way for Mama's.

During the upheaval, I hadn't noticed Bella leaving. Until now. When a little white poofter's pick-up rolled up to her as she walked to her ride. If I couldn't stand pweeny pig-eye weeny, BVD-wearing Newton talking to my woman, I could endure this even less!

Whoever he was, he was just this side of getting his _neck_ slashed, forget his fucking tires.

I could smell his slobber from my parking spot across the way.

_Motherfucking FUCKER!_

As he slowed his engine and sidled up to Bella, I punched my fist through the roof.

The old coot's Ford was tricked out with the likes of _Real Men Love Jesus, – It's more than just your average push-pole,_ the kicker? His license plate read '_Jagoff'_.

I was going to rip the cunt's hick head off!

Sniffing again, I inhaled a rank infusion of redneck and furball. Gaddamn Jacob had been here too! What. The. Fuck. Did they think it was Open Season?

The coon-hole tailed Bella to her Chevy.

I tore into my leather seats, stomped the rubber treads, misguidedly kicking another un-fuckin'-sightly Fart Boy in his bloated stomach so he groaned, not quite so happily, "Ewwww, bet that left tracks!"

_Jesus Christ._

The foul, middle-aged codger, who had the audacity to approach Bella and was thereby about ten steps closer to meeting his maker, rolled down his window as he came sidelong to her. Pushing his florid face out, I gathered his jaundiced eyes, _as if he stood a chance, the arthritic geezer._

Oh, I could hear him. I could tell he was trying to be a gentleman about his attraction, but I didn't give a good goddamn!

Stupid fuck with rheumy eyes and a twenty-a-day habit making him wheeze, "You live around here?"

Zero points for originality, assmaggot.

I managed to remain in my truck by some fucking epic act of Lucifer!

Bella could handle herself, but that didn't make this shit any easier, 'specially as I was at the bottom of the dung pile as far as she was concerned.

I growled and shredded more leather, bit near through my lips, and observed while taming every single savage urge to whip out faster than a whirling dervish and kill the mullet-head outright!

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!_

Beaming a smile, not even imagining this dickweed could be coming on to her, Bella replied, "Yeah. You?"

"I'm from Walterboro,"the missing link answered_._ I wanted to rip his spaghetti shaft out of his high-waisted Wranglers and choke him with it, but, on second thought, it was probably too small to block off his windpipe adequately.

Ripples of venom lifted up through every fucking single one of my muscles, whetted my teeth, tingled on my tongue, raised the sinew of my thighs and made me want to devour him! My eyes in the rearview mirror had turned to anhinga black, a desire to kill or love… Bella could deliver me, or I could just cross the threshold and never look back!

Still far too friendly, she tilted her head to the side and rebound her hair in the rubber band she'd taken off the prepackaged plastic cutlery delivered this morning, "Oh yeah, well that's real close."

Emboldened, he shoved his shaky hand out, "I'm Chester."

_You've got to be fucking high, mate!_

Still ignominiously clueless and again with the douchery Southern propriety, "Bella, pleased to meet you."

Ripe old Red had the justness to blush, at least. I hissed, knowing his next question, wanting to rip out his melamine eyes when he wondered aloud "This might be a bit forward, but…_wedding ring? Are you married?"_ _Forward? That was the most gross understatement of the year!_

I felt Bella's shock from across the parking lot, and watched her bristle slightly and then settle back down, "No, I'm a bit too young for that yet." Chester the Cheese Dick grinned over chipped teeth. Brooking no misunderstanding, still friendly but now firmer and sterner of tone, Bella made it known, "But I am taken."

Chester's chunky face fell and I heard his heart drop with a galump out his chest. _Good. Fuck right off back to Walterboro, whitey._

My heart, on the other hand, became airborne like the bitch of my Bronco hitting the ramp of a termite mound and finding flight!

_Damn fuckin' skippy you're taken!_

All manners and namby pamby, Chester thanked Bella for her time and then skedaddled away, thank ye motherfuckin' saints alive.

My self-congratulatory session came to a quick end when she called out, "You can stop skulking around now, Eddie."

_Shit-damn._

Disembarking the truck that had pretty much been my home recently, I strolled to her.

_Bella._

I looked her in the eyes. Eyes so bright and brown and possibly just as much pissed as forgiving.

Grabbing the back of my neck, I toed the gravel. Seemed I'd done this before.

Because of her.

She trapped one of my boots beneath a slim foot, bidding me to be still.

Reaching up and back and over me, she grazed my arm with her warmest fingertips and brought our hands down between us, lax like a jump rope.

I was still swishing with jealousy, for damn sure I recognized that green blight for what it was, and couldn't halt the words shoving out of me as I held her hand right up to my chest, "Don't you fuckin' speak to Chester next time he comes sniffing around."

Disentangling our fingers, she stroked over the pockets at the top of my flannel, "Aw, baby, he's harmless."

I bit my inner cheek but even that couldn't stop the pain of her absence from tumbling forth, I'd abstained from her touch far too long, "What about me? _Huh?_ You're so ready to forgive Chester his impudence, Rosie for being just like me..," I bent low and looked up at her, "Mama knew too, you know that, right?"

"Rose was my very first friend here," Bella sniffed and stepped away from me.

"What the fuck?" I was pissed. "So, it's a-fuckin'-okay for Rose to be a vampire but not me? What is that shit, girl power?"

She tried to keep her lips in a straight line but a gurgle of a giggle griddled past, "More like _ghoul power!_" Well, now she was hysterical. _Oh Christ_, and still mad, I could make out, when she continued standing up to me, pushing me on my chest when all I wanted was to squeeze and hold her tight. "What were you thinking, Eddie? You really should have told me sooner."

Oh, she was on fire and fucking beautiful! Jesus, I'd missed the sight of her; her hair was a wild nest swimming in the sultry breeze, her eyes snapped like twigs to crackling flames, her round lips pursed. I grinned at her instead of showing any bit of the remorse she was waiting for.

Another prod, the placket of my shirt wrapped inside her fist so she could pull me in closer to spit, "Oh, you thought I'd be just an easy lay at first, was that it?"

My eyelids peeled back in recognition. Because that's _exactly_ what I'd thought! How the hell could she read my mind when I couldn't get past the gates of hers? "Yeah, you know what? I wanted you in my bed, Bella, the first fucking time I saw you. I wanted to taste your lovely, creamy body even more than I wanted to lick out your blood. _I wanted to fuck you and forget you._"

She wound my flannel even more tightly inside her hand until seams started to pop, and I fucking loved her strength, "You've got some gumption, Eddie!"

Almost as furious as her, that she'd managed to get me tell her everything, my eyes were hooded and turning black with dust and all the desirous deeds I'd wanted to do to her, and still did, "Yeah, I used to." My jaw tightened and the pulse of venom echoed the throb of long-forgotten blood boiling all through me. I nabbed down on my lip and then licked the cut I'd caused.

Grabbing her wrist, I made her let me loose, held her hand away from me, groused, "I never wanted to feel anything, Bella. Least of all for a mortal woman." Groaning and giving in, I brought her palm to my mouth, parted my lips against it, heartened when she didn't claw or strike me, "I tried to stay away. And then, _yeah_, I hoped I'd be able to just fuck you out of my system," I made the disgusting words as soft as possible, but she still flinched and curled her fingers in. "I couldn't. I didn't. I couldn't get past you… leave you alone."

Hooking the pads of her fingertips into my mouth, she stroked, and the feeling went straight to my groin. Then she pulled hard and toxin leaked lengthwise down my dick, I could hardly concentrate on her harsh words through my ragged, audible breathing, "Dangamighty! You want to know how I felt? _Degraded, Demoralized._" Bella shook her head and let me go, "Only one other person's made me feel that way before."

Her eyes were damp and hydrated when she sneaked back to me, her tits tight with hard inhalations and choppy exhalations she tried to control. The nothing space inside my ribcage crept with horror that I'd made her feel like this, more so that someone else had hurt her before me.

"Bella."

The shake of her head negated me, but she allowed me to embrace her. Against my neck she spilled, "I fell head over heels for you! Courtin' me, you with your cock-of-the-walk attitude, your beauty, and, _damn Eddie, _your sexiness, sensuality. Your hardness and softness. And you held out on me!" She punched me, and it felt light as air, that tapping blow to my abdomen.

Agitated like the spin cycle on Maw's washer, I was cagey and livid at myself. So, being the rat fucking roué I was, I unleashed on her, "Bullshit. I've made mistakes, but I've never disrespected you! _I couldn't tell you because I didn't want to lose you!_"

"FUCK!"

Disentangling myself, I stormed away and stopped. Spun on my heels and watched the fight burst over her face again.

My own extraordinary fucking Fury.

_I didn't want to lose her._

Almost silently, I tested her limits and remained away because to be close to her, not knowing if she was going to forgive me was killing me outright, "You can hate me for being a vampire." I nodded my head –_ who wouldn't?_ "But don't fucking hate me for wanting you so badly I'd do almost anything to get my way." I looked up with a grim grin on my mouth, "That's the selfish creature I am."

She swayed before she shored up her stance. Waiting.

With my hands clasped at the back of my head, I raised my eyes heavenward, pleading for the first time. I spoke to the sky, because I couldn't watch her, "Enough is e-fuckin'-nough already! You either need to deal with me, as I am," I renewed my seduction, swaggered right up to her, ran my hands down her bare arms and around her slim waist to her fucking beautiful bottom, anchoring her closer, "or cut me loose. Because you're killing me, love."

Little durable tugs tickled my hair, plasters of wet kisses branded my throat,

"Now?"

Leaning down, I nosed her hair and glugged her perfume, "Now I just want to make love to you." Turning my cheek so it laid against hers, I whispered into the shivery shell of her ear, "What about you, baby?"

"You're my very first beau, Eddie. And all your completely preposterous un-humanness can't change how I feel about you," with just a nudge, Bella had me against her lips. "Now," she smoothed her hands over my ass, and I closed my delirious eyes over such a simply sexy act, "Follow me home, because I'm not done with you."

_~~ll~~_

_Not done with me? In what way?_ Shit! Was I gonna' get lucky? Or was she going to nail me to the cross with more spite and accusations instead of her body?

I tapped on the radio again. I'd thought so much recently it felt like I'd caught a migraine from Em. I had half a mind to stop off at the Exxon to pick up some headache powders for myself. At least Miss Brenda, the clerk there, always had a kind, "Y'all take care now, baby" for me.

'Course I was met by another of God's great jokes along the way: _Life is Hard, Afterlife is Harder._

You don't say, dude.

At the most hostile of all homesteads, Bella jaunted inside, leaving me holding that imprudent dress bag again, to run the gauntlet with Dear Old Dad.

Wanting nothing more than to slam the door in my face, he held it open, _just._ "Son," he smirked, thinking, _sonny boy._

"Sir," I tilted my head, _Sir Fuckface._

Though he opened the door wider, he still blocked the portal, and I could see the gun left loaded, safety off, on the stand behind him.

_Here we go._

"I don't know what transpired,"–_someone besides Bubba was checking his Daily Word desk calendar–_ "between you and Bella. But so help me God, if you fuck her up, I'll castrate you, _Edward._"

_Ahhhh, my ears! What was with this pervasive 'Edward' BS?_

_Make me a eunuch will you, I'd like to see that._ I swallowed bitumen and the oily release of vagrant vengeance and supplicated, "Yessir."

Moving back, he halfheartedly motioned me inside, turned his back and returned to his _This Old House _hour.

Instead of going in, I hung back, leaned sideways over the porch. There was an odiferous reek surrounding the house. Cloves of crushed garlic were scattered strategically about the slab of her domain.

In a strict voice, just loud enough Bella could hear me as she reached the second floor, I rumbled, "Bella, what's the meaning of this?"

She ran down the stairs and popped her head back out the storm door, "What are you waiting for?"

I pulled her out onto the stoop and held her shoulders, "Well, something stinks, Bella. You trying to keep me out?"

Suddenly, she looked mortified! "Oh hell! I just didn't want you slinking in here uninvited."

I stared for a few more beats before I propelled her to me and chuckled lowly, "Oh yeah? Then why'd you leave your window unlocked?"

Bella tried to push away but I held her closer, harder, tighter, my cock nestling right up to her waist, "I'm just messing with you, love."

She fell into me when I joked, "And garlic for damn sure wouldn't keep me away from you."

"In that case, get your fine ass upstairs," she invited, muttering, "_Dirty rotten scoundrel."_

In her bedroom, I eyed up her belongings. Bookbags, clothes, that tiny cramped bed that had known both our bodies, a fucking huge pile of shoes from sneakers to heels that had me turgid in an instant. A silky robe hung from the back of her door, swaying as she closed the latch.

She held out her hand to me and lifted one eyebrow. I clenched more tightly to the garment bag. It was my monkey-spanking security blanket! Bracing myself, I handed it over, my hand shaking just a little bit with withdrawal symptoms.

Bella noticed and laughed softly to herself, _as if she knew._

"I just need to change out of my Daisy Dukes, _baby_, and grab something to eat. Then maybe we can go out to my shed to finish our conversation?"

What? Disrobing? Now?

I should probably turn my back and afford her some privacy.

_Not likely._

I sat on her bed and watched in fascination the unveiling of Bella's stunning body.

_Did the woman have no shame?_

Did I?

Apparently not, on both counts.

Languorously, Bella unbuttoned her chambray shirt and pulled it open and down her arms. Draping it over her straightback Shaker chair, her tits swung down like the most delicious teat treats I needed to suck.

Undoing her short shorts, she bent and shifted them off her ungodly long legs.

I sat straighter, and forward, widening my thighs to allow my hard-on a bit of room.

Her bra was next, some damn thing that was see-through and one of those gray colors I couldn't make out – probably pink, but it had lace and mesh and bows, and that was enough to get me going.

I choked, "You know, you could change in the bathroom."

She parried, "And you could turn your back."

_Not a fucking chance, sweetcheeks._

With her mouth-watering breasts charmingly half hidden behind her forearms, only serving to lift her porcelain hills and further fuck me with all my scheming intentions, Bella turned _her_ back. And then I saw them. The panties from Hell.

There was no quelling the cum cradling my cock. Not at that vision in ribbons and half her ass bared, the lush bottom curves like white-fleshed peaches I wanted to eat with my mouth wide open – _and when the mother-lovin' hell had I started with all these food analogies_! Ruffles sat over her ass, just below the dimples begging me to sup them, and beneath those ruffles was a little heart situated over the cleft of her rear, completely cut away, baring skin.

Looking over her shoulder, Bella chided, "You can stop ogling me anytime now, Eddie."

_Well, that was fucking it._ I didn't even attempt to look shamefaced. She was teasing me out of my gourd!

I stood and pursued her, wrapping a hand around the dip of her nude waist, skin fine as talcum powder. Launching a series of wet kisses up the top of her spine and down again, I slid my free hand to her front, skimming up over her breasts, the rough cool of my palm humming against one pebbled nipple while my fingertips reached softly for the other.

Bella moved her hips against me, searching out my solid erection and searing a trail of wicked circles against it.

Lightly fingering through the heart shape on her rump, I tugged her against me forecfully, tonguing her neck, panting uncontrollably, "Just who the hell are you wearing these for? Your friend Chester?"

Moaning gently, Bella reveled as I tenderly pinched her nipples, "_Ummm…_you've got nothing to worry about with Chester or anybody else, not with those hands, baby. And I'm wearing them for myself, don't you like them?"

With her curvaceous hips enveloped in both my hands, bunching the sheer wispy stuff, I found her lips and kissed her soundly, deeply, before answering, "I fucking _love them_." I cupped her bottom and squeezed it, hearing the pop of seams beginning to rupture like my foolhardy fuck-wand, "In fact, I like them so much, I really want my mouth against them, right fucking here," I finished by sliding two fingers along her exquisite pussy where the panties clung damply.

"BELLA!" Chief Cockblocker at your service roared, "You and that white trash have been up there long enough!"

Muttering, "Shit a goddamn," I stepped away from Bella and laughed shabbily. I rubbed my chest instead of my dick and tore my eyes away from her, trying to calm down. "I think I best just wait in the hallway." _Before I fuck you right up against your pretty little dresser!_

She nodded and started looking for clothes, emerging a couple minutes later in a mortifyingly short skirt and threadbare blue t-shirt looking for all intents and purposes braless and apparently still turned on by the high beams she flashed my way with her equally enchanting smile.

Meekly following her to the ticky-tacky kitchen, I pumped her for information on her nefarious ride home with the Stray Dog instead of pumping her with my diamond-hard dick that was fast becoming its own sentient life form.

She hummed and moved from the 60's era drab green fridge to stove to chipped porcelain sink making god-knew-what while I fired questions at her, "So, was your drive with Jacob enlightening?" I feigned indifference and ripped a few dozen paper napkins to shreds.

"Well, not really." Bella rinsed her hands and wiped them on a dishtowel before combing her hair back from her scrumptious face, "I mean, he doesn't know you personally, does he?"

Relief floored me, "Not really," I repeated her words.

She turned back to chopping whatever the hell that green smelly shit was, "All he said was his people, the shapeshifters, known as the _loup-garu_ in his Cajun culture, had ties to your ancestors…that you came from the same mythical beings and a feud between your related races rent the brotherhood of vampire and 'werewolf'."

I vaguely remembered Carlisle waxing all philosophical about some such, back when I cared enough to listen.

Piling a plate high with salad and hefty dose of meat – _I wanted to tell her not to bother, I had enough protein to go around – _she sat across from me and eyed me over a forkful, "What have you really got against him, anyway?"

Pushing back from the table, I hunkered with my elbows to my knees, "He stinks."

Exasperated, Bella chewed and glared.

I squirmed and asked, "What's he got against me?"

Bella leant her head into her hand and paused from munching – _Damn the Devil, I wanted nothing more than to munch her juicy little lips, and not the ones that were busy frowning at me _--, "Look, I've known Jacob since I was no more than knee-high to a June bug. He's like my younger brother, and he worries about me, especially now I've gotten myself all mired up in you. Ever since I understood what was going on, _they_ never held out on me. So give me some credit for knowing something about this supernatural world surrounding us."

"Right, does that make Hill-Billy Black your uncle or something?"

"You could say that, yeah."

"And Charlie knows about them too."

She nodded.

"And he don't give a shit about y'all cavorting with the shape shifters?" I just couldn't get my head around this human family, with one foot solidly planted on soil and the other galavantin' around with phantasmagorical beasts.

"They're family, Eddie."

_Well, maybe I could be too._

I heard the cock of a firearm from the front room and thought again. Fucking bat ears much, _Dad_? Why could these mortals read my mind?

"Anyway, they travel in a pack for fuck's sake! Just like chicks going to the bathroom and in need of hand-holding… _group mentality._" I gave my closing arguments that sounded empty even to me.

Bella rolled her eyes and turned on the black and white boob tube stationed under the cupboards, clearly trying to tune me out.

Luckily the offering was amusing and disturbing enough to appease me. What had we here? None other than Stan Millage of Sioux City, Iowa standing in line to get his _esteemed_ copy of Sarah Palin's _Going Rogue _– the irony wasn't lost on me. Going completely off the facking tracks on a one-way trip to Russia, 'cause we all knew she could see them Commie bastards from her porch, and thus her tutorial in foreign diplomacy was complete. _"She's a down-to-earth person who will fight against the government. I can see her out there fishing with the guys. Plus, she's hot."_

I held onto my sides, laughing really loudly and shaking the table. Bella giggled and smiled at me and crunched up some more food.

She turned off the telly and sexual tension descended like Cheney's buckshot in his pal's ass during that notorious hunting trip.

Riled up, my nose flared from the stench of fodder overridden by the fragrance of Bella. The situation became much worse as I focused on her again, because Bella with anything in her mouth called to mind _me_ in her mouth.

I was so insufferably distended; I was hanging on by a single unraveling thread of sanity. All that stopped me from lunging across the dinted wooden table and tackling her to the sticky kitchen floor was that one very fucking Mad Dad would no doubt fire off. His shots would ricochet off me, and then the gig would be over.

I needed a diversion, and fast. "Do you think I'm creepy?"

She about strangled on her dinner, and that nearly made a dent in my swift, cold length, "No! Okay…a little." She shoved the plate aside and pressed her legs against mine under the table, "You're still _you._ Naughty, nasty, hiding your heart," as if a mortal, I felt the flush of poison fill my veins in a fake flush, "and sexy as hell." Bella finished while running undercurrents of passionate caresses along the inseam of my jeans.

Well that had backfired because I was back to square one.

"C'mon, let's take this outside, baby, so we can be alone," she stood and held out her hand.

I rose and beseeched my priapic phallus to take a hike.

The slice of a silver moon in her crescent lit our way. Beetles buzzed and mosquitoes whined. I trod as many crickets as I could find, silencing their screeching one insect at a time.

Reaching ahead, I unhooked the latch and held the door open, waiting for Bella to yank the pull-chain and illuminate her retreat.

It was just as I'd first seen it; low ceilinged, motey, yellow and orange in the blare of an unshielded bulb. A workbench. Her tools cleaned and ready. An oilcloth apron lay over a high stool. And the voucher I'd given her for Pernell's Taxidermy stuck by a pushpin to the exposed timber planks of the wall.

I felt honored she'd brought me here.

Until she pulled on her rough-hewn pinny and cracked her knuckles before a Bobcat manikin. He could have made a nice meal for me. Nonetheless, my cock bobbed to watch her set to travail.

Rubbing the skeleton down with chemicals that stung my hypersensitive nostrils – _even Carl's bull semen-saturated hands were preferable to this impregnation! _– Bella decided to lay it bare, "So, Eddie, I've been googling."

Oh fuck, she was all business now! _Of course she fucking had._

_Jesus Hormonal Christ, fuck me now! Or don't, actually… I wasn't into the bung-hole bungee jump. Not unless it involved me and Bella. _I knew she was still talking, but my brain had fogged over like a substantial Charleston soupy morning with all sorts of miraculous genius mischievous thoughts of her. I'd zoned out but caught her wrist just before her flat palm made contact with my insolent cheek, "You don't want to do that, love."

Her face was afire with aggravation, "I'm standing here talking to you, as you entreated me to do, and you're not damn listening to me! So, yeah, I'm pretty sure I _do_ want to slap you! Why the hell not?"

I pulled her close while she struggled ineffectually, and the heat of her ire rained over the ivory of her skin in flashes of color like a sunset, so fucking astonishing. With her mouth just a breath away, I gnashed, "Because I'm a vampire, remember? And if you strike me as hard as you want to, you'll probably break your bones, darlin'. Besides," I loosened my grip and pushed the tip of my tongue to the corner of her mouth, "I wasn't listening because you're standing here, in the least of all clothes, working your trade, and I've never wanted a woman more in my life. I find it," I brought her hips up and flush to my tumescent cock, "_hard_ to concentrate."

Bella snuggled into me then pushed me away with a cheeky grin, "This probably won't help then." She lifted the apron's loop over her head and let it fall, grabbed her shirt in both hands and pulled it off before replacing the scant rectangle against her bosom. Nonchalantly, she turned her back and set to work.

_No, Bella, that doesn't help one fucking bit!_

I nibbled the inside of my bottom lip. And craved to touch her.

Shit, I could see the blossoming sides of her tits escaping the smock. My hands held her, flat against the swelling half moons of her tits. My breath pronounced against her nape as her sinews stirred along her feminine back, crafting a still moment on the dead bobcat's life.

Her face was a time capsule I wanted to freeze; her body a piece of art I needed to bury myself in.

My long fingers reached beneath scratchy canvas, and I tugged her nipples up more as I queried against the lapsing side of her smoking hot mouth, "Please tell me you didn't check Facebook."

Stampedes of breath tore through the shanty, "Why would I?"

I reproved and stroked the weighty spheres of her tits, "Support groups." I wanted to steal right down to the kindling of her pussy but censured myself.

The bold way she laughed belted her head back to my shoulder, "Yes! Like Hell-Anon? A support group for sex with the undead?" She snorted and sat back further into me as her stays loosened.

Becoming serious, she turned to me, twisting that apron so it was skewed on her body in a very unwholesome manner, "What about your toxic sperm?"

I resituated the square of duckcloth over her tits, "Negligent in such a small amount."

She raised an eyebrow, coyly, "_Small amount?"_

Her knuckle to my crotch made a lie of my words. "Even when I cum, love, _and I cum hard_, it won't affect you."

"Your strength?" She wrangled with my forearms to my biceps and splayed one hand over the ligatures of my chest, the other down the muscled ledges of my back.

"I can be a very gentle lover."

A shade of invidiousness stamped her features. "You've been with women."

I looked to the floor, "Yes."

"Humans _and _vampires?"

"Yeah," I pressed my lips together, delineating a firm line. "But you knew-"

She stepped back,"I did. I knew you got around, of course! It's just…_different now._ Knowing what you are, and you've had sex with your own kind. I mean, they must be untiring and flexible as hell, right?"

_Oh, this woman!_

"None of them hold a candle to you, _not a single one of them,_" I kissed her with need jetting through me, to make her understand, _she was the one!_

Our mouths twisted defiantly, and I pushed her pinafore aside so I could adore her tits with my fingertips just as my tongue slipped in and round hers.

I stabled my growing boner into her thigh and billeted, "Just to clarify… you're really a virgin?"

I'd never wished to see all the spectrum of colors before, to watch the foreign blush flip up her face as she sighed, a tiny bit annoyed, "Yes, Eddie."

"Not a man or vampire?"

"Jesus, no!"

I couldn't help myself, I still wanted to jump up and down and hump her through the boards of her den, "No wolf?"

_SMACK._ Bella pelted me with her fists, making sure to tame her riot a little bit, "NO!"

Smirking, smarting from her bluster, I guided her back to me.

"Why now, Eddie?" she held herself apart.

"What?"

"Why did you decide to tell me now?"

_Oh fires of hell smite me now._

"I couldn't make love to you without coming clean." My throat was so tight I could barely swallow.

"This was a ploy to get in my pants?" She flashed with most righteous resentment!

"Jesus and Lucifer and the Pleiades, NO! Bella, no. I just knew_, for the first fucking time_, I couldn't be with a woman without being truthful!" Her back was biting into the raised table, and I wanted her to understand.

"I… Want…You. More than any woman, more than anything. I want you, Bella. And I want you to accept me. This," I shuffled back and raised my arms like a petitioner, "is who I am, _for you_."

Part snide and half softening, she tapped my physique with highlighted brown eyes and prattled, "What about daylight? Drinking? Can you be killed?"

That last unsettled me, in her current mood I wasn't sure Bella needed pointers on how to take me to my final grave, she was looking all woman scorned and shit. "Sunlight doesn't hurt me, but it does make me shine," I smiled. She opened a bit more, again. "We all like to drink. It's one more form of release. Not to satiate our hunger, but to drown our everlasting thoughts."

She looked far too sad, now. "You were made. You weren't born like this."

"I was a human. Just like you. I died in 1918. I had a mother and a father and no siblings. Influenza diseased us all; my mother, Elizabeth Masen, asked Carl to save me." I met her tears with my fingers, and brought the salt and wet to my mouth. "He did, the only way he could."

A sob broke, "What a long time!"

"Not so long, Bella. These decades brought me to you."

Her hands never stopped moving, but her body stilled, inside.

Thick clouds of wet sex and conflict shaded over the tornado… the very small room of a sudden became a saturated sauna of sauciness.

"You like seeing me do this?" she waved her arm back to her taxidermy statuettes.

"Yes." I couldn't deny it.

"You've watched before." This didn't sound like a rebuke.

"I have."

"You want my hands on you," the honeycomb smoothness of her lowered voice invited me closer.

"Yes." _More than anything._ "And you want the same," I knew it.

Packing up, sliding drawers closed, she shirked the bib to her waist, and I mimed her actions, taking off my shirt, in the name of equality and all.

"I want to feel you."

"I need you."

Her denuded flesh against mine was divinity.

Pushing her fingers into my hair, tugging it, running her fingers like waterfalls down my throat, she murmured, "Can we just make out for a bit? Pretend we're just a couple of horny teenagers?"

_Who was pretending?_ Fuck yeah, I jumped all over that!

Her plump, puffy lips turned from my jaw to my mouth and plucked mine between hers. When her tongue peeked out, I lathered it gently, pressing her lips wider, bending my hips so we were level.

The downiest of all caresses teased us, just the tips of her nipples rasping mine, just the smoothness of flattened hands sliding over shoulders and backs and over ribs.

It was the end of May, and it was hot. Slick with sweat, Bella slipped more fully against me, her jim bubblies setting fire to my pecs! Groaning, I pushed fingers down the back of her skirt, and feeling those unreasonably fucking fantastic panties ruching against my skin, I remembered I still hadn't tasted her right between her legs.

With sips over her mouth, taking my leave, I coaxed her to the stool and detoured down her cleavage, enjoying the sight of her twisting and turning into my taunting touch. On my knees, I spread her legs like the lover I wanted to be, but roughly hauled her skirt up to her hips, like the monster who wanted to feast from her.

Her bare feet perched on the stool's spindles.

_Obscene!_ I was face first with the pussy that launched a thousand dicks. I stared and moaned, she breathlessly chuckled, "You like what you see, Eddie?"

I swirled one digit up her slit, watching the shudder ripple from her lace-covered lips down her thighs and calves and back up to her slightly shaking tits, "_Understatement baby._ You like what you feel?"

Wet, toasty warmth pulled my mouth closer. She just looked so…_ripe._ I licked her, once, twice, thrice like I was lapping blood from an open artery. But this tasted… _better._ Digging my tongue deeper, I parted her panties and her pussy to find the deep erotic channel inside. She rubbed the top of my head and then scolded, "Shit! _Oh shit, I liked those panties!_"

Smiling, I opened my mouth wide as possible over her, kissing her soundly, skating my tongue into her lotus flower, thinking how fucking insane it was going to be with my cock Right. Fucking. There.

Bella's hips jerked. She reached behind to the table's platform for a handhold, arching her back so her nipples thrust right up. I grabbed one and pinched it, found her clit and sucked it, ducked two fingers inside and lunged.

Looking up, I watched her eyes close, her cheeks cave in, her hair swaying. I wet the little triangle of pubic hair and went back to her pretty, clean pussy, the sides of her split lingerie scathing the invulnerable skin of my cheeks. When she was close, so close her muscles trembled like fall leaves ready to tumble from branches, I grabbed her ass and brought her right to me so my mouth was absolutely full of her, and my tongue lashed in and out inhumanly fast!

I cajoled a climax out of her. Her body stopped like a broken watch. Her hips lifted, and I leaned back to watch the orgasm take hold, replacing my tongue with my fingers.

All lathered up like a young filly in a photofinish at her first Kentucky Derby, her nostrils quivered, her quim shivered! She shouted, and I tried to hush her with my hand to her mouth, grinning like the fucking happiest man on earth, "_Jesus, yes. YES!"_

I was slightly pissed she'd mentioned Jesus instead of me, but shrugged it off, enjoying the way she bonelessly draped over me. Forget the ubiquitous cum-face, she had a full on been-finger-fucked-and-tongued-solid rash scrolling across her sensitive body!

Her moistness was all over my hands and face and I cleaned myself up, disregarding my flannel shirt for my own mouth and tongue. Not squandering a drop, I made damn sure to sweep a few more times down her cunt too; Bella could bottle this shit and make a fortune because I'd probably buy it all and house it next to the blood in my Frigidaire.

My mellow was broken by the ever-present throb of my shaft, not to be outdone by her huskily-worded declaration, "I want to meet your family."

She wasn't fuckin' dicking around when she'd said a few weeks back she was a courtesan; she had my snake in a chokehold and knew just how to use it.

I stood and looked away because I was so close to losing my load I couldn't focus on a post-orgasmic Bella right now, "You've already met most of them!"

Joining me, Bella squeezed her hands like a beautiful boa constrictor around my cock, cupping my nads, "You know what I mean. _All of them,_ as vampires…not the good ol' boys and girls you purport to be."

I hitched my dick to her tethering hold and leered, "Am I not a _good ol' boy_?"

Even while she glowered, she made a reedy, wanting vessel of my erection, the knot of my cock needing out!

"Aw hell, can I at least get laid first?" I growled.

Demurely, Bella unhooked my jeans and opened them, slurping in her bottom lip in approval when she saw my commando chitin cock at the front and ready, "Hurtin', are ya'?" I nodded vigorously. "Well, maybe first we can get back to the matters at _hand_." I gulped furiously and placed my palm against the wall in this dime-sized shack, looking into her knowing, mischievous, earthen eyes.

Solid strokes up and down, dipping to the inflated head that was beet purple and full as fuck, Bella wondered, "So beautiful." I clamped my teeth shut before I bellowed, curled my fists before I tore planks off the walls, and my cock hooked inside her wandering fingers like a fishing lure at the end of a line; weighty, bobbing.

My hands were blind and famished, making their way unerringly to her breasts, pushing them together, her aureoles almost kissing each other.

With counterpoint strokes gilding my boner, Bella leaned up and kissed me fast and bottomlessly. I played with her hot, silky orbs. She smirked, "I know what you're thinking."

I fuckin' hoped not, because I was having some completely depraved thoughts!

Letting go my cock so I shouted, "Ahhhh! Shit!" she sat on the ledge of the one window in this room where sex was smothering us. Smushing her tits together, just as I'd been doing, she raised her eyes under dusky lashes and gave me a come-hither look and… _oh my Jesus-Fuck-Mother, she did know what I was thinking!_

Even while I shucked off my Levis I felt I should decline, "You don't have to." _Who was I kidding? I didn't have the dress nocturnal-emissions-were-made-of anymore, she did fucking have to!_

With an arm holding up her mounds, she crooked her finger, beckoning me. My dick-on-a-leash led the way.

Creating a gap in between, Bella and I both watched in awe as my cock sat right against her chest. Viscous venom filled me at an alarming rate in her cushioned embrace, so much so that drops overflowed, lubricating her cleavage, asking for movement.

Inside the alabaster skin that was nearly celluloid, I started to stir. Traveling, pacing at first, slowly. When her long neck worked into a gorgeous arc backwards, I knew Bella was as turned on as me. I held her throat in my hand, used my other to tighten her tits about me in a vivid vise of the most luscious, salacious kind.

Hot and damp and soft, her clamp compressed me. Every time my head emerged the envelope of her breasts, I breathed a little harder. More thrusts, and Bella's chin met her collarbone. On the next breaching, her mouth opened over the crown of my cock!

"Oh FUCK!" I threw my hands up to the roof and pounded until dust rained over us!

Slipping between her lush hills, venom spraying out of me and into the crevasse, slicking in and out of her lips… I erupted out my blowhole with such velocity I feared for Bella's life! She grabbed my ass and opened over my shaft so everything, _all of me,_ played down her throat. And I watched the current outside her sweet fucking neck as she swallowed, again and again.

The evil alien lifeform that was my penis was already coming back to life when I was way certain she'd just damn near rocked the top off my cock.

Bella wiped her lips and advanced.

"WAIT!" I hollered.

"You getting' _cold feet_?" Bella was in complete sex-goddess mode now, tempered by her wise-ass mouth.

"No, I ain't no pussy," more ribbons of cum trashed the insides of my long pole and the extraterrestrial being made me stroke it while my night-dark eyes made her yearn for more and more, "But I'm not _making love_ to you, at least not for the first time, with Charlie Tuna just yards away. Because, when we do, _fuck, _you're going to scream so loud you'll probably set off car alarms."

Bella swallowed hard.

_Yeah, you're damn right you'll be speechless._

Recovering far too quickly for my liking, she swatted my hand away from its self-help and chucked my clothes at me, "You have a point. And just as well because I don't have any condoms. Do you?"

_Twat the hell?_ What the shit with all the schlong sock talk?

"No. Don't really need a love glove, baby."

She stopped, half-clad, "You've _never _used protection?"

I hastily pulled on my clothes, because this sure as shit didn't bode well, "No…no need to, we're impotent as immortals," the very idea of vampire babies made me shudder, "and immune to disease."

She quirked an eyebrow, and my filthy mind homed in on the way her right tit tilted with the motion as if linked by some kind of weird lascivious thread that further called out to my enlarging hard-on, "And all the rumors about you are true?"

_Huh?_ What fucking rumors? If she was referring to the scandal about my ever-hard ways and supreme reign as a sex-god – _Rebel Eddie Always Ready_ (didn't think I needed to prove the veracity of that statement), then yeah. If she'd heard I had three nipples, a little piece of gossip Bubba had spread about like genital warts running rampant through the varsity cheerleading squad while we were still interred at Wando High School, then NO!

"You've been with a hell of a lot of women, girls, and now vampires by your own admission, and you never thought to sling your salami?"

Why was it the mere word 'salami' from her mouth had my scrappy scrot crying out, _again_?

"Er, not really?" I braided my fingers behind my head, hoping the way my jeans leaned really low off my hips would distract Bella.

I was mistaken.

"Eddie, _Eddie, Eddie,_ I don't give a sweet tea full of shit if you're shooting out vampire blanks with your stallion there," –_Oh! Stallion? I could get used to that –_ "Your penis doesn't touch this vagina without proper covering."

She was so incensed, hardly decently dressed, simply fucking sublime, I laughed!

Shaking my head and buttoning my denims, leaving my shirt undone, I hugged her to me.

Brushing her hair from her face and off her neck, I nibbled her cheeks, kissed her tired eyelids, rimmed her ear, "Okay, baby. I just don't know what kind to buy, but I'll have a look."

Bella brightened at me and gave new life force to what I'd hoped was my flagging flag pole, "I'm allergic to latex and pre-lubed dink wrap, just so you know."

_Alrighty then._ Lambskin it was.

I took my leave before Fuck-a-Chuck could find us out.

With visions of Bella's purring pussy under my mouth, her scent on my face, the sensation of her tits cuddling my cock, I drove home. Stopping at all the lights, abiding by all the laws.

Striding into the trailer, I found Bubba shooting his faux snot into a tissue and inspecting it for mucus. The tube was on to the local news; a piece on the city of Olar with its dirty water. I tore the box of Kleenex from Em and threw it across the room, then sat next to him. Mayor Walter O'Rear – Bubba knuckled my skull and I cracked his ribs, and we both guffawed – held up a glass of urine-colored water straight from the tap. Resident Mary _Fail_ gave her stance, "It just ain't right! They put in the water tower in the fall, and now all that comes out smells like…" the anchorman urged her on with a nod of his microphone, "_Human waste._" The blousy, pie-faced chit looked like a semi-femme form of Babe the Blue Ox, nipping beneath her floral blouse and just plain enough to make my shit crawl inside its hidey hole.

Bubba clicked off the TV, it fuzzed and flickered out. "So?" he turned to me.

"So what?" I scowled.

"Bellaaaaaa?"

"I don't kiss and tell, assmunchausen." But all I could think was I'd be balls deep in her Ho-Chi-Minge Trail soon.

Noting my glazed over dull eyes, he asked, "You're gonna' go with the wetness protection program, right?"

"Huh?"

"_French Letter, Chapeau d'Anglais?_" Oh, Bubs fucking scared me when he went all Masterpiece Theatre on me!

I'd never worn a beef bivouac before.

"Dude, you are not going to let your longjohn go up the jizz path without a splash guard, right?" Damn, Em was right into this!

I sat against the arm of the sofa, "No." Glumly I replied, "She won't let me."

Laughing and laying back beneath his afghan, Bubba lectured, "Good. What if you catch something from her vadgehood? Crabs, Herpes, warts… Coach Clapp," we knocked fists over the mofo'er who could only wish to motorboat Bella.

Scratching my sideburns and rubbing my chest I made it clear, "No worries, braw. She's a clean slate."

He came straight off the couch, "What ta' Hell?"

I nodded and hid my grin.

Em slapped my shoulders, "That's fuckin' rad, man!"

"Ain't it?" Pride like rays of sunshine lit my insides.

"You still need to wrap the pickle, man."

I pushed off the chenille cushions and loped to my bedroom, listening to Bubba chortling away about, "_Pure poontang, pristine pounami, _and _unpolluted pussy," _like it was some new mantra.

Dreamily, I shed my clothes and lay atop my bed. I was gonna' get some… more… and soon. I tried to shut out the visions of Bubba getting up close and personal with his own pigskin.

I was just about ready for a very much deserved victory wank when skunk-fuck Em propped open my door, "Hey, pudwhacker, you don't think she has one of them Rabbits, do you?"

Fuck's Sakes Alive!

_Kill the Wabbit._

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~Hell Yes? No? Maybe? At least tell me you got hot and had a laugh! Please review, and I'll have your Cullen boy of choice get back to you~

Sorry, ladies, no Eddie at the end of this one. I hope you forgive him; he's _spent_! **But, he's agreed to an interview for the next RWaC with AngryBadgerGirl**.** Got somethin' you want to ask him? Please PM Miss ABG with your questions.**

Yo fabulous readers; y'all gave Eddie and co. just about 50 reviews last time! That's unprecedented…I don't need to tell you how happy, and horny, that makes our most filthy-minded and fuckhot Rebelward!

The **Indie Twific Awards** have started and I've been nommed a crazy amount (thanks, ladies)! The first round of voting runs from 2/20 – 3/02. Here's what I got goin' on there:

Best Love Triangle Complete_:_ _Incarcerated_

Best Secondary Characterization_:_ _Incarcerated_ for Maria

Love Conquers All Novella_:_ _Looking Glass_ and _Incarcerated_

Canon or AU that Knocks Your Socks Off Complete: _Incarcerated _and _Looking Glass_

Love Conquers All Oneshot_:_ _Jealousy _and _Surrender_

Go Vote and check out the fics! There's a huge amount of undiscovered talent to be found. Theindietwificawards(DOT)com.

Thanks also for the fucking awesome nom for Eddie and Rebella, Best Oral (shower scene ), at the **Golden Lemon Awards**! You can vote until the 13th, so git on it: goldenlemonawards(DOT)com My _Comeuppance_ is also up for Best Make Up Sex.

Finally, I know I've mentioned it already, but Imma do it again: new AU fic, _Youth Without Age and Life Without Death_. And I updated _Surrender._

Cheers, bb's!

Rie and Eddie~


	17. By Hook, By Crook, or By Cock

All my love to vanessarae for beating each and every bitch of a chapter into some semblance of submission, and to Viola Cornuta for the quotes, back rubs, content help and listening to my mad raving.

KatHat, cheers for your idea, bb.

Biggest baddest love to all who _try_ to keep me sane or fuel my craziness: the DW h00rs. Special adoration to winterstale, Viola Cornuta, BellaStjerne, and 'Gayle' for your encouragement with my real writing.

**Disclaimer:** Whatevs.

~~NSFW, so have fun, ladies. Oh, and this goes out to Vi, who's been saying for about eight months -- even making cross stitch samplers and shit to decorate the double wide -- _Just Fuck Already_~~

* * *

**By Hook, By Crook, or By Cock**

Bubba and his indelicate constitution greeted me the next day in the fucking tiniest bathroom ever built; I'd just wanted a quick scrub of pits and cock, maybe a little cologne, I might even try to brush my hair, but as I wouldn't be seeing Bella today that was highly doubtful.

Instead, I was faced with a washed-out Em, sitting on the throne imitating the posture of The Thinker with his Carhartts down around his ankles. _Jesus H. Christ, you are such a bastard!_ Slamming the mirrored door on the medicine cabinet shut, I taunted the asshat with his bogus IBS, "Why don't you get your Weapon of Ass Destruction the hell outta' here so I can clean up in private?"

Fuck me, it was like he hadn't even heard me, he was frowning and clearly trying to push something out.

"Oh, hey man, I'm glad you're here." _I sure as fuck wasn't._ Rubbing his gargantuan hands over his thighs he continued, "I been thinkin'."

_That never boded well. _ "Hate to break it to you, but you ain't no Thinker," I raised an eyebrow at his obviously phony predicament, "You're The Stinker." I slapped my knee and guffawed a few minutes to myself while he looked on… _calmly?_ What the shit?

That warranted at least a headlock/noogie/wedgie triple-play.

When I finished gleefully snorting, he went on, "I been reconsiderin' the whole willy wrapper thing."

"Come again?" I was flabbergasted! I thought Em was the new spokesperson for safe sex or something, and here he was telling me, "What now?"

Bubba whined, "What? Ain't it my prerogative to change my mind?"

I stifled a laugh behind a… _yawn?_... but smirked nonetheless; _someone_ was PMSing.

Ignoring me, Bub explained, still perched on the potty, "Dude-man, let's face it, y'ain't exactly packing a normal piece of manhood in there," he nodded to my groin, "probably just tear right through any cum-catcher, especially fucking lambskin!"

I'd stopped listening when the word _manhood_ came out his mouth. _Manhood?_ Jeering, I chuckled again, "Braw, you almost on the rag or what?"

Oh yeah, he was definitely getting readyto ride the red tide on top of everything else; his parlance alone made it clear he was back to reading his fluffy comfort books, Harlequin Romance. I leaned to the right and sure enough, the shuffle of our top-shelf porn mags next to the john had been supplemented with Silhouette novels and even a Barbara Cartland romance. When I looked sidelong at Em, he was wiping a fake tear from his cheek, thinking '_I don't know why you gotta' be so harsh, bro.'_

"Oh shit, Bubba, you want me to call Maw and see if she can bring a fresh supply of Kleenex?"

He stood up, apparently done with his sham-shit, and put himself all back together with a grin that made me wonder if he was pulling all this crap just to get a rise out of me, "Nah," he slapped my back on his way out, "But I did take the liberty of calling Paw out."

Hanging my head out the door, I yelled, "What the fuck for?"

"Well, we gotta' check _below deck_ so Bella knows you're uncontaminated and unlikely to reproduce, right?"

_Great._

A short while later Paw pulled up, decidedly doing a donut in the dust heap of our yard, _just because_. At the sight of his white coat and black bag, I swallowed some toxin that tasted like reflux.

"Before we get down to the testes test, I hear there might be a dildo or some other toy infringing on your territory?"

Like I needed a reminder! I punched the wall and nodded, "Yeah, looks like."

Em sat in his Lay-Z-Boy (by now stamped with the shape of his physique), and Carl reclined on the arm of the couch, "There's a couple things you outta' know before you get all crazy like you do."

_Alright, okay_, both Em and I nodded.

"Sex toys are all well and good, boys. A woman needs her release as much as a man, and sometimes they just wanna' juice their own oranges, you know?"

Dumbly, we agreed.

"Now, Esme has this thing called a Dolphin. It's like the crown jewel for couples. This _delphinidae_ likes to play ring around the rosy, know what I mean?" _Well, yes, kind of, but I really wish I didn't!_ Emmett's thoughts echoed my own, but Carl carried on insouciantly, "So there's a bit for her, a bit for _him_." I thought he was done, but no, he wasn't, "She likes to keep it stored in her Vera Bradley tote," and he had the effrontery to wink at us!

_Uh, NO! So did not need to know that! Christ on a Krispy Kreme donut!_

"However, if it's botherin' you that Bella's getting too gung-ho with her puss-plug playthings, you could always impound them."

_Ding-dong!_ An energy saver lightbulb went off in my head, _Yes!_

Clapping his hands together, Carl rose and pointed the way to my bedroom, "So, let's get on with it, Eddie."

"Er, um, what?" I scratched the back of my head.

He adopted his professional demeanor, "I need to do a full exam."

Christ Almighty! "Huh?"

"I can't endorse your dick without a complete physical, son."

_Endorse? Too much NASCAR, Carl. _Sure, I needed a pit crew for my Monster Prick that ached for lots and lots of maintenance, mostly by my own hand, but… a full exam… for what? _Sponsorship?_ This was like Hell-Anon all over again!

I clasped my hands like a jockstrap protecting my cock, "You sure about that?"

"Yes, we're going to check you out. If, of course, you really want to make love to Bella without protection, that is."

I did the Dead Man's walk to my bedroom but not before pointing at buffooning Bubba, "He is _not_ going to be your _ass_istant," I declared, with heavy emphasis on _ass_.

_Great, again._ An infertility inspection, an erection exam, the shaft SAT's? _This better mother-loving be worth it!_

Oh, humiliation. I was nekkid, on my bed, with my father-sire in the same room. And he was about to run a gamut of investigations on my fruitless gametes. Closing my eyes tightly, I fisted the chenille bedspread and remained still as a statue.

I jumped at his first touch and then zoned out as much as possible, holding an inner rant with myself while he performed the flip and lift: _What the Hell and Tarnation? This was so gay! Didn't he have a naughty nurse or someone who could administer to me? Best be doing legit med procedures down there and not some freaky fuckin' vamp-vet shit… and I swear to all that was un-fucking-dead, if he even attempted an anal analysis I was going to dismember him, I didn't give two shits what Esme would say!_

One of the worst fucking days of my life!

I heard the snap of his gloves being pulled off, and quickly dressed while he kept his back turned in a rare moment of professionalism.

"Almost done, son," Paw placated, "Just get me a sample, and we'll both pretend this never happened. I believe Junior prepped a room for you."

_Hmm, okay._ Now, after the inglorious inspection, I was expected to bust into a cup? On my way to the larder, a room for food ridiculously bigger than our lavatory, I punched Bubba in his grinning maw. _Because._

Turning back, I advised, "Why don't y'all go see what the sibilant psychic's up to so I can do this thing?"

_Ahhh, fucking peace, fucking silence, me and a fucking plastic cup?_

After the testicular torture I wasn't in the happiest place for getting my head off, but I thought I could make _goo_ with this. Ever-thoughtful Jazz had kitted out the pantry-cum-spooge room with a full spectrum of Hustler, Bootylicious, Fox –_hee hee hee_—New Cummers, and Swank as well as the RCA from the porch with porn rewound and ready to play..._bitchin'._

I remembered Carl's parting words: _Now the best way to get the best quality 'catch' is for the man's partner, that would be Bella, to give him a hand job -- more first rate ejaculate is produced from a higher degree of arousal. Seein' as Bella can't be here, Jizz wanted to make it easy as possible for you._

Well Holy Hell! Bella might not be here in person, but she was situated front and center and full-frontal and fucking naked as a blue jay in my photographic, pornographic mind. Almost full-color in heady snapshots of her snatch!

Me being _me_, it didn't take long for my rod to rejuvenate and within two minutes, not even glancing at the smut-o-rama Jazz had so thoughtfully arranged, I stroked out quite a few long yokes of cum, taking careful aim, as I was known for, to hit the un-lidded cup so it filled nearly to the brim.

_Was there ever any doubt? Jerking off was my day job._

The boys came back, and I pressed the cold container to Carl, "How long?"

"Well, I gotta' run a range of tests, vampire venom's a might different than bull semen, you know? But I should have the results to you later today," Paw hooked his arm around me in a manly hug and left, circling two more donuts in the soft, sewage-like soil of the front forty.

Pained and pissy, I waited for the phone to ring, _god I sincerely hoped my shit was dead… didn't really need any little Eddies runnin' around out there, and if I could prove it to Bella I'd get to fuck her BARE!_

Bubba busied himself with reading over all the new material Junior'd kindly donated for my emission assessment. Then he played the Wii. _Keep Fit._ Finally he left for an assignation with Rosie.

I never moved from my station by the landline but to get fresh brew and blood from the ice-chest on the porch.

Hours passed.

My teeth gnashed.

Eventually, the phone vibrated on its tarnished, silver hook. Carl spoke quickly, "Everything looks in perfect non-working order."

"Yes!" I exclaimed.

Before I could get too amped up, Carl added, "One final thing. Don't ever, _ever_, touch the Cialis, son."

_Cialis? Like I'd ever need that shit!_

"Remember Vernon?" Oh yeah, we'd called him Vern the Viagra Vamp… he'd gotten so hard he'd nutted straight out of his membranes… never could fuck again. Hell, walking unaided proved a handicap for him.

"Oh, and a word to the wise," from this far distance I could still read his vet-med mind as he thought of my push-pole a wizened thing – _What the hell? Of course my balls had migrated to Siberia, I'd been thinking of Putin instead of poontang with Carl inspecting my junk! – _"You might not want to destroy Miss Bella's dildos, instead, save 'em for future use, _together_."

I didn't bother hanging up the phone, leaving the receiver dangling near the floor, hearing the dismal bleet of the ringtone as Paw cut off.

I was going Wabbit Huntin'.

_~~ll~~_

Trespassing one of Bella's laws, I made fast work of breaking and entering her house. _Again._ I'd promised, yeah, but this shit just wouldn't stand! There was a nauseating dip in my stomach when I considered Bella might-could be a dildosexual!

_I_ wanted to be the one nailing her, banging her, plastering her against the crumbling plyboard of her atrociously decorated kitchen and any other possible fuck-Bella-on-a surface available. I wanted more suck from her succotash lips, and I wanted to fuck. I certainly wasn't cool with her getting her jollies off with a fucking pocket rocket.

Damn! I needed her! Not just _want_. _Need_. Fucking pining for her body, her soul, her heart was making me a sissy silly.

_Get a grip!_

I could smell the trail of twat tears coming from her bedroom at the top of the rickety stairs tentatively held together by the bitten spindles of beaten-up railings. How the hell had I managed to miss the tantalizing scent of her dense chemistry before? The perfume was… _floral_. Fucking Esme and her flower shop talk messing with my head again. But yeah, the bouquet was atrociously tempting with its spray of lilies, freesia, cut grass… all that was spring and burgeoning and new and torn through with the deeper, pungent, thoroughly Bella musk of strawberries ripening too closely to the earth. Pendulous and resting their full, fruity weight onto the loam.

I wanted nothing more than to pulverize that faux cock inside my fist, just like the succession of jellied, vibratin' eared Jackrabbits' Em had told me Rose had gone through. Macerated in her unforgiving enclave in her search for the ultimate non-vampire, inhuman orgasm.

Not that I wanted to hear about that!

Any more than I needed the beta of Esme picking up a lemon reamer while she dug around her ten or twenty boxes of baggies looking for replacement batteries thinking, _"This looks more detailed than my newest glass dildo!"_

Apparently she knew the tricks of the trade, and how to use such apparatus without busting them to dust.

So, I knew all about girls and their toys.

And sure as fuck if I wasn't getting any, neither was Bella!

Burglary aside, not even wild horses could drag me away. _Fuck it_, not even a wild hog, aka Pig Popo Papa Swan, could deter me in my search.

I sniffed out the offending article PDQ.

_Ahhh, _so Miss Bella _was_ all about DIY! No wonder she was somewhat able to hold out against my sexual charms.

I muttered aloud, "Oh silly wabbit, your ass is grass!"

JR -- _and I was not referring to J-fucking-R-fucking-Ewing of Dallas days gone by_ – was about to become a thing of Bella's past. How the Sam-hell any red-blooded woman had ever gotten her pink, lacy thong into a twat-twist over that, I just couldn't fathom!

Not. One. Bit. JR. The Jackrabbit. To be more specific, the _Waterproof_ Jackrabbit. Yeah, I'd snuffed the submersible out immediately, laced and perfumed as he was with Bella's beautiful mouth-watering, venom-inducing flavor. _Asshole_. She thought a battery-powered, man-made, manufactured, neon piece of semisolid meat-stock-like silicone in the shape of pseudo man-flesh could compare to my cock, tongue, lips, mouth, fingers, and fuck-god status? _Nah, I think not!_

Elmer Fuckwad Fudd's prey had nothing on me.

Like any good redneck Bella also kept a firearm, only hers slept by her bedside, not locked up in a cupboard on the highest shelf with ammo removed. _Her second weapon of choice? _ The Bullet. A sleek, silver, oblong smoking gun. I was concerned that she was going to inflict an injury…a masturbatory maiming, _that is_. I was petrified her wild manipulations of the Bullet all over her swollen clit while she rocketed into oblivion was gonna cause her to burst into flames and singe her sexy minge, and I couldn't have that, could I?

I confiscated that little bastard too.

Thereby leaving my sweet, sultry, sassy Bella with no outlet for her sexual peccadilloes, _I hoped_. Just me. And I was more than ready and randy for a full-on rutting than I'd ever been in my entire life, death, _whatever_!

The Energizer Bunny met the Coppertop! I would _not_ be bested by a faux-powered phallus. I was like Duracell; durable, long-lasting, _and fuck Durex_…I was going to feel of her splendid wetness directly on me. And now I had her battery-operated boyfriends in hand, I started to wonder. I mean I seriously began gnawing, and fuming, over how the goddamned hell she'd learned she had a nonoxyl-9 aversion if she was still a virgin?

It was only after I'd thrown the Littlest Cockblockers on Earth into the back of the Bronco that I began to think this hadn't been a very good idea. Hindsight was 20/20 and being a colorblind bastard, I sure as hell wasn't privy to that.

Shit was going to hit the fan, and not in a fake Bubba way neither.

_FUCK!_

I stopped at the nearest gas station to pick up some Pringles for Carl and a 2 liter of Coke Classic for target practice. Miss Brenda, the clerk, met my eyes and nodded minutely down to the feet of the hausfrau in front of me. I hid my snuffle with the shuffle of my boots as I took in her footwear. _Fucking slippers!_ Lord love a woman secure enough in her femininity to head to the local filler-upper in her lambswool slippers.

_~~ll~~_

The week that followed was, _first_, grueling with the phone call from Hell's Angel Incarnate while I was contemplating all the ways I could rip the silver metal beads out of JR's non-throbbing shaft. I only kept it around because it still smelled of her and, so long as I kept my eyes shut, it made an apt replacement for her Good Ship Lollipopping.

I glared at the Jolly-Roger when I saw it was Bella calling. Still incensed about how she'd found out about her sensitivity to lube, I was bluff and gruff, angry instead of guilty.

Her voice was low, and possibly deadly as my own, "You got something you want to say to me?"

_It was ON!_ "Yeah, actually, why don't we start with just how the hell you figgered out your lady parts can't abide pre-lubed condoms?" I was blowing out hasty, frosty breaths and really fucking distraught by this time.

I heard her inhale as if I'd slapped her, "What? What the frig, Eddie! _I said I was a virgin, not that I'd worn a damn chastity belt._ And isn't this a bit two-faced?"

_Maybe, possibly, yeah definitely, but I wasn't going to let her get the upper hand._ I pursued, "Just. Tell. Me. _Please, Bella._"

"Fine. I wasn't raised in a nunnery, you know? In fact, with Renee pretty much being a deadbeat mom, I was free to do whatever I wanted-"

I broke in before she went any further, furious with her, enraged at my own savage compulsions, "I don't need to know the details, Bella." My voice was raw, my throat constricted.

Stroppy, she came back, "Well, you asked!"

"_Argh!_ Just give it to me in clinical terms." _Hell if I didn't know enough about that after my Great Groin Authentication at Paw's hands._

"I've messed around, Eddie. And one time while I was with a boy, back up North, we got very close to having sex. He put on a condom…he…we…_shit_…we started trying, and the next thing I knew I felt like there was a fire going on in my vagina." _Blast it, why the hell'd she have to say vagina! And why was that scientific word in her voice so fucking hot? I scrambled back to being pissed off_, "and, it just wasn't pretty, Eddie. Puffed rice comes to mind, actually. You happy now?"

_Well, yeah! Of course I fuckin' was but I wasn't about to admit that, _"Bella, I'm sorry. And, for the record, I just can't imagine your pussy being anything but pretty, love."

I could hear her smile over the cell, and then I definitely heard her fly back into wrath! _Crap on a corndog! Crisis NOT averted!_ She was definitely het up, "Is it my turn now?"

I choked, "_Em_, okay?"

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BROKE INTO MY HOUSE AGAIN!"

I held the receiver as far away as I could, but my tympanum still shriveled from her shrill screech!

Time to deflect.

Calmly as possible, I soothed her ruffled feathers, "Why don't you tell me what you're really upset about, heh?"

_I didn't imagine this'd be much better, but at least she'd never made me promise not the steal her little love-tchotchkes._

Bella took a deep breath and I could imagine the vengeful flush on her cheeks and chest, "You pilfered my pretty pink prick?"

As if she was in the same room, I ducked my head, "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Shit, Bella. It's not like I don't want you to get off… I just want you to get off with me alone." A huge, fat, weighty silence, like the size of my inflamed dick, sat between us.

"You're telling me you don't masturbate?" _Cocksucker! Hearing her say that was damn hot!_

"'Course I do! I ain't soft, Bella," as if to prove the point, my Pavlov penis jumped-to.

Her breathing deepened, and I hoped it wasn't with more scorn, "Oh, I know that, baby." _Fucking hell did she ever.._ "So don't be such a horny, supernatural hypocrite!"

I chuckled a little bit, "You know I'm all sorts of fucked up, love. Right?"

I took her silence for agreement. "So, I know I have no deed rights on your body, _but I want to._"

A hissing noise followed and a deafening clatter, "Bella?"

"Present! _Oh, Jesus,_" she mumbled.

"I just don't particularly care for you deploying a stand-in dick for my cock. Especially not when I'm _more than happy to take care of your needs mahself._"

"You are, huh?"

I nodded emphatically, my shaft agreeing along with me, "Fuck yes."

"Basically, you're jealous of a forged facsimile of your penis," she wanted to know.

I hummed lowly, "Babe, I'm jealous of anything, _human or man-made or as unnatural as me, _that comes near your body."

She labored for breath, "I think I need to say goodnight now, Eddie."

"Wait! You're not going to-" _Fuck Me! She'd cut me off!_

Worse, better, _worse_, and _way fuckin' better_, the next few days passed with more phone calls that became increasingly explicit. In retribution for confiscating her Rabbit, I offered to talk Bella through some salacious phone sex. She declined, but her denial was more an acceptance of my forthcoming plans than anything else.

As usual, I made good use of my palm, pretty damn sure she too let her fingers do the walking.

That just made me more excited.

_Well_, I was one stimulated, stymied sonuvabitch, all told.

I poured my unsatisfied phallic energies into scheming our weekend away. My hellish horn-dog hurt with only the supple sound of her voice to my ear, disengaged from her body, and more so with the minimal –_ by minimal I meant ZERO -- _coochie contact.

_Romancin'?_

The very idea found me weak in the knees. I didn't have a fucking clue how to do this, but I knew I wasn't going to bail.

After innumerable unsuccessful attempts to get Bella to give it up with me over the cell/web-camera/texting, I managed to persuade her to accompany me for a weekend away. _Alone._

I booked tickets, rooms, packed my bags instead of packing my meat, and, _finally,_ it was Friday!

I hadn't even tugged my topsail for two intolerable days!

_I was saving it all up for Bella._

I tried to rein it in… this might just be a co-ed outing, depending on how ready she was. But I sure as hell fuckin' hoped not.

Especially when I hopped down from my truck and found her waiting on the stoop, drop-dead gorgeous in one of her preposterously illicit tops -- _ the ones that tied around her neck, leaving her back and half the sides of her tits bare, what the devious motherfuck was that shit called? –_ and one more knee-baring skirt that only heightened my arousal.

I grabbed her hand instead of my dick or her tits, and kissed the inside of her elbow, then her neck, and her wrists. She was still up in arms about my arrogant refusal to let her climax with little more than a silicone toy.

I had to admit though, I was pretty fucking pleased with myself.

I thought I was a genius.

She was aggravated, frustrated and in heat.

And I was hard.

_A win-win situation._

The sun and mugginess of this fine May day had me bright and shiny as a gala apple, and my skin stretched tight and glossy over my cock; I felt the rush-pound of poison filling me for the umpteenth time in less than two hours.

I opened her door, helped her inside, and inspected her damn glorious irate face. She was still mad about the pleasurable playthings. As I stalked over to the driver's side, I felt her glare burning-hot brown holes into me, but I didn't give a shit. Bella was all mine for two days!

By her forced demeanor, I knew UPS hadn't come through.

By the way her legs rasped together and she sighed and her silken nipples lapped at the fabric on her tits, I knew she was just as eager as I.

_What can Brown do for you?_

Thank my lucky stars _Brown_ hadn't come through. Bella's artificial dilrod delivery was still sitting in a warehouse.

I needed to make good, make her smile. I dug in my back pocket before I shifted out of her driveway and laid a thick white envelope on top of her lap, lingering against her thighs for just a moment.

She ripped into the paper like she thought it might contain some new fangled kind of inflatable dildo or something, then looked mightily perplexed as she scanned the sheets of paper inside, "What's this?"

I chafed my jaw, noting my hand was a bit sore from too much beating off, and allowed a lopsided smile, "My medical records."

Skewering me with a frown, she bent over the information again, and fuck if she didn't take a goddamn long time reading the work-up on my body. I drummed on the steering wheel and gnawed my lip, adjusted my crotch a couple times, wondering what she was making of my stats – _they were pretty impressive._

Finally, she folded the paper, placed it back in the envelope, and shoved it in her bag before leaning back into the headrest with her eyes closed. While I watched, her throat arched just the way it did when I sucked her silky, pointy nipples into my mouth, and my cock jacked up like the sterile stallion it was, trying to get to her through cloth and over the console. _Oh hell, she was turned on!_

I gripped my knee instead of going straight for her mound, deep and low and dirtily asking, "You okay over there?"

"Hmm?" She raised the sail of her lashes over scorching eyes, "_Yeah._ I was just thinking this is so… sweet," – _sweet, yeah, that's what's made you look like you're on the verge of cumming_ – "You _really_ don't want to use a condom, do you?"

Reaching out, I ran my hand deceptively lightly from the round of her shoulder down to her hand, twining our fingers, stroking the soft skin between each finger, "I want nothing between us. Just skin against skin." I mimicked the action with a few more sensual caresses gliding my strong fingers between hers.

She came to from the tense miasma with a little laugh, "Carl was your physician? Isn't that something like simony?"

I had to shake my head out of the gutter it immediately descended into because, _well_, simony rhymed with sodomy, _obviously_. "I think you mean nepotism," – _and I wanted to commit nippletism –_ "At any rate, it's all legit, he took the Hippocratic oath, you know."

She mumbled something about _hypocrite_ asshe crossed her arms over her perfect fucking tits so the bared half-moons at her sides threatened out even more. "_Humph._ Alright, _fine_. You're in the clear, it seems. But what if I'd been unconvinced; did you even buy any condoms?"

I pushed down on the gas and draped one wrist over the helm, "No need, love, I had insider information." I grinned at her, then licked my lips while staring at her peek-a-boo tongue touching the bow of her bottom lip, "You know how I can read minds?" She nodded but concentrated on my mouth instead of my eyes, "Alice can see the future."

Silently ingesting that morsel, Bella looked out the window, and seeing what direction we were headed in, her curiosity got the best of her, "We're going to Folly Beach?"

Bending low, I tickled her beautiful leg from calf to mid-thigh where I settled my hand, pushing up the scant skirt, "_Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty_."

Placing her hand over mine, holding me in place, she smiled so purely, "Why, Eddie! Quotin' from George Bernard Shaw? You do know how to turn a girl's head, when you're not pissing her off, _that is_."

The Folly Beach Pier was packed with the lowcountry's shabbiest, for it was the Reggae Nights Summer Festival. While dusk lowered over the choppy Atlantic, I squired Bella through the crowds while gangs of GeeChee and Gullah still fished off the sides for dolphin. They didn't warrant my attention as much as the concert-goers though. We were knee deep in Rastafarians and Rainbow Brite beanie-wearing dread heads – I'd figured I'd look pretty fucking spiffy with minimal effort next to the Congo Roys and Raquels. _Bonus?_ This would give me a chance to watch Bella shake her tail feather, and aside from groping her, or pounding my pistol over her, _that_ was one of my favorite pastimes!

As soon as the drum beats and guitar riffs started up, other _more potent_ spliffs were lit up. A joint was offered to Bella, and she kindly declined. I did the same. Surrounded by the trippy tunes of _Hope Massive_ and _Dubconscious_, there was the token Marley cover band, of course, as well as some Skinhead Reggae.

The mild-mannered, multicultural mob grooved on; the nappy, scrappy rastas, the Red Stripe drinkers, the smoke-from-a-hemp-rope tokers, the College of Charleston students, and the older-set of hippies -- the ones who'd perfected their own breed of weed in their back yards over decades of cross-pollination.

I danced with Bella to John Holt's _Lonely Girl_ and everything else melted away.

_Let me make your broken heart like new…_

_Hey there lonely girl, don't you know this lonely boy loves you…_

_Oh how I long to take your hands and say 'Don't cry,' I'd kiss your tears away._

_And once you're in my arms you'd see, no one could kiss your lips like I will…_

Singing to Bella, I struggled to remember two things, with her slender, willowy body swaying sumptuously against mine:

1. She was a virgin.

2. Holy Shit! _Look at those hips and tits and legs! _I rubbed my thigh between her legs, harnessing her skirt with my musculature and pulling it high as discreetly possible. Venom piled up inside me all over the place, and I finally brought my hands to the sexy curves of her coyly-displayed breasts, holding those orbs in my palms-

3. _Fuck! _Where was I? _Oh shit yeah, she was a virgin._

Our mouths collided, and it felt fucking hot out here.

Bella played her hands down my chest to my belt, separating from me, pulling me with her as she parted the horde like Mama Moses with a mere undulation of her hips, "Let's get out of here, lover."

_Christ yes!_

_~~ll~~_

I took the twisty, turny, long goddamned road to Kiawah Island's hoity toity private enclave really fucking fast! The valet at The Sanctuary had the nerve to raise his eyebrows at my Bronco but thought better of it when I growled at him. I pounded on the tinny bell in the lobby until a mousy clerk arrived to organize our room key.

_Fuck her in the elevator?_

_Fuck her in the hall?_

_Suck Bella against a wall?_

_I wanted to do it all!_

Instead I rambled on about The Sanctuary… how amusing I found the name of the resort in light of Bella's fucking Novocain-like numbing abilities, that maybe we'd run into Oprah, though our story might better suit jagoff Jerry Springer, there was a protected wildlife refuge I aimed to take full advantage of – and I stopped there as we reached our floor and--_FUCK!--_this was it!

Our lavish apartment was appointed with the best of fucking everything. I mean, _really_, it was a bit fuckin' posh, but _whatever_. I looked good and Bella was poontang pie on a platter.

Closing the door, I gave in. Our kiss was almost chaste, lips wandering slowly from side to side as our heads turned and our bodies began their carnal twist.

Licking down her neck, I nuzzled her tits, feeling the tight buds against my cheeks, and I wanted to shred the clothes off her immediately.

"Just give me a minute, baby," Bella begged off, allowing me to take her bag to the bedroom.

I hit the minibar and downed two scotches, then one more for good measure. I made her a vodka tonic. I washed my face from the little sink there, sniffed my pits, changed my shirt, took off my boots and socks, and belt.

Undid the top buttons of my jeans.

Decided to take off my shirt.

I let my just-fucked hair lay where it wanted.

I felt my eyes about fall out of my head as the bedroom door opened.

Bella spoke first, marauding to me, "_Mmm, _you look mighty fine tonight, _Eddie._" The way she whispered my name made me wish I'd just taken off my pants altogether because I was about to burst through!

_And what the fuck-her-hard-with-my-heathen-cock _was she wearing now?

Again, with the mind reading or some shit–_well, maybe it was just the way I was drooling over her and unable to shut my gob --_Bella's husky voice was even more honeyed and rough and low, "It's black, baby. And this is a balconette." she cupped her tits in the skinny black lace and lifted them so they almost toppled out, much to my delight.

Letting their weight drop so they jiggled and I groaned, Bella smirked and closed the distance between us, "I wore black because I know you have a hard time seeing red… _literally, at least._"

I brought her against me, all curvaceous and deft and fine-boned, "I like the black, Bella." I traced every edge of the expensive, beribboned, bewitching lace, from the top hills of her blessed tits to the undersides that were more plump. Low along her pubis, and around the boundaries sitting high on thigh and rump. "I like you better without them. May I take them off you?" I nibbled just below her chin, and into the corner of her seesawing mouth.

"Yes," she sighed.

Taking care, I unclasped her bra, lowered her panties, laid the items aside. I smiled ceaselessly when she unhooked my jeans, pushed them down my legs, kissed behind my knees, and took them off my feet.

We both outright moaned when the fullness of her body met the tundra hardness of my own.

"I'm glad we danced earlier, but I was imagining this all the while," I had her face in my hands and managed several long kisses, our tongues escaping languorously from one mouth to the other, before we started to turn.

Fiery heat and cold burn, we remade the Dance of Seven Veils.

I took one index finger and played it upon her downy cleavage, all soft, hot, sweaty, sweet.

She mapped my pecs, my shoulders, my arms, fiddling each sinew and ripple and toxic, blue vein.

I paid special attention to the moles forming a constellation on her boobs, the scatter of freckles across her nose, her puritanical widow's peak that seemed especially sensitive to little kisses.

All the while we moved together, the music fashioned inside _her_ heartbeat. And the sounds we loosed were little more than lovers' lyrics not to be repeated, never to be heard by another.

My hands to both her breasts, I cupped the firm swells and pushed them up. Bella shook, rocked, _cursed_ under her breath and turned sunset-like, saturated, _everywhere._

She sank low in front of me, a fusion of acceptance, begging and ownership. Licking the strutting muscles of my pelvis and up to my abdomen, handling my cock with care and love. Massaging it, wetting it with her mouth, slipping it around her fists and pushing down hard on my head until I grappled with her hair and pleaded, "_Please, Bella, please._"

_Such a damn flirt! _She turned around at my feet so her naked, perfect, peach ass strolled up and down my thighs. Until I placed one strong muscled bit between her and slithered into the edges of her sweeping silkiness.

Bowing back to me, arching her spine away from me, Bella blew hot heat over me. I held her by one arm around her waist, one across her collar bone. And she danced on.

In counterpoint beat, her hips swiveled over my aching, filling, purpling cock.

My jaw clenched, my eyes dark as midnight during Alaska's never-ending night.

Everything about me was hard… she was soft, sotto voce, moist.

Bella shuddered; her windswept, sand-plastered hair hitting me like gems at my stomach, my chest, my throat.

Beneath her legs, I hoisted her to me, her ass nestling my cock, her back against my torso, her arms reaching around my neck.

I took her to bed, _and fuck pulling back the covers._ Swiveling her in my arms, I laid her down, watching every single bit of her blossoming and slinking in ecstasy.

My palms parked at the top of her legs, I spread her out sensuously. Dipping both thumbs inside, I groaned at her broiling wetness, borderline insane.

To her nipples, still winding my fingers up her smooth lips, seeking inside flesh, slipping in between all her folds, flickering her clit just from the bottom before pinching her caul, I crawled up Bella.

Barely audible, hardly able to breathe for her perfection, "Ready?"

She nodded, pulling up to her elbows to kiss me, "_Yes._"

Handling my shaft, spreading her cunt open, I tapped on her clitoris with my turbaned top, enjoying the scrunch of her body, the rush of her condensation. I slid up and down her pussy with all my long length several times, lubing my shaft, making her want it more.

My tongue tipped her lips, my hands lifted her ass, "I'll go slow." _I will be gentle._

I groaned into her mouth, and my forehead crunched with desire. My jaw tightened, my dick hardly stoppedits foray one horrendous inch at a time. Widening my grip to her hips, my lips to her mouth, turning my head, swishing my metallic masterpiece, I foraged… _slowly._

She was wet. She was tight.

Clamped down against colossal impulse, I paced into her, every ridge of my cock met the rings of her pussy.

Breaking through with a burst, a cry from Bella, which I soothed from her face with my hand, from her open mouth with my solacing kiss, from her freed pussy with the stillness of my dick, I stopped.

Holstered.

_Totally fucking inside Bella fucking Beautiful Swan!_

_Finally._

I was blinded. This was monumental. Not to go all pussy and Jizzper-philosophical like, but being inside of Bella-proper was nothing, _nothing,_ short of an out-of-body experience.

I wanted to shout!

Instead I stole breath, foisted up on my arms, and saw the butterfly emotions winging across Bella's telltale face: pain, perfection, ache, want, _wanton._

She opened her eyes, and they were blazing.

She moved her legs, and they were beckoning me closer.

She ringed her hips, and they were telling me she wanted more.

"Too hard?" I tried not to lunge even though I was shaking with the need to burrow further.

"No." She shook her head and marched her heels right on top of my ass.

"Too cold?" I clenched my cock so she could feel it beat inside her.

A moan, then a laugh, "No, _just go!_"

_Go? What the F-_

"Go, _go, Eddie_," she gyrated and ground tighter, "_Make love to me._"

I sat back on my haunches just to watch, because our motions together were hypnotizing… the glaze of her wetness on my cock hooping slowly in and out… her engorged inner lips sucking like a riptide then pursing around my jock as I joined with her.

Then I had to pull her up to me, because I wanted to feel her _more_. And all over me. I'd dreamt of fast, hard, dirty, raunchy; but not this time. Later? _Oh yeah._

Scratching over my back, squeezing my ass, pulling on my taut hips, Bella moaned, "_Oh Jesus, Eddie! Can't you go faster?"_

I struggled so vehemently to remain a gentleman, "No. If I do, it'll be over, _and I want to fuck you for a very long time." _I plunged so dreadfully slowly around Bella's sweet delta. "What about slower? But harder? Would you like that, Bella?"

She lassoed her arms around my neck so every contour and plane made a maddening home, teased, massaged; her sharp elbows dug into my back, and her hot mouth was at my ear, "I don't know if I'll be able to cum this time."

My balls contracted when she said _cum_. Licking, sucking, and moaning into her mouth while my shaft leisurely slurped within, without of her slick pussy, I whispered, "Does this feel good?"

Kneeling up, I held her weight completely, her ass in my hands, her thighs enveloping me, her sweat trickling in tiny, salty trails between us. _She was so light!_ Curvilinear and sexy, Bella writhed at the new angle as I beat into her with a solid tempo.

"Yes," she groaned. "_Oh yes._"

Smiling tensely, I promised, "I'll keep going then, _just like this._"

When her back bowed like a slim oleander branch, the beauty of her tits like unfurling buds, I laid her slippery body down. Her hands yanked my ass, hair, shoulders; wordlessly demanding more.

Speeding just a bit with each thrust – _good thing I'd busted my beef many, many, many times over the past week!_ – I lifted her to me by her bottom with every _faster, faster_ dig.

Throaty, rumbling in my chest.

Heaving.

I wrenched one pillow from the mountain behind her head and pushed it beneath her luscious ass. Leaning down, I tasted her nipples, but not before paving a path with the flat of my tongue all over the jiggly circumference.

I blasted into her. Her throat arced, her body shivered, curses and oaths ripped from her sensual lips in gasps, "Fuck Fuck Fuck! Oh, _God, _yes, yes, _Jesus-Eddie YES!_"

_At least she named me as part of the triumvirate. _

From molten to shivering to frozen, we hung together in a flashing bright orgasm! Two halves made whole. Two magnets impelled, impaled, propelled from the joining of my cock to her cunt.

My lower back… _ached_ as I unloaded inside her, still pistoning, lifting her jerking hips higher, tighter, clamping. _Greedy_.

Before she could even catch her breath, while my own was glugging laboriously, Bella started to laugh.

Her untamed reaction was unfathomable, but infectious. Before I knew it, we were rolling amongst the hills of ridiculously expensive bedding, holding tight to each other, a flurry of naked limbs, with our leavings making a damp path everywhere!

She stopped, reclined like a living, totally fucked-seven-ways-to-Sunday Venus de Milo, and kissed me square on the jaw and right on my lips, "Thank you."

I brushed her hair away, opened the blankets, and met her inside, curling her on top of me like a warmed magical cloak, "Happy to oblige, love."

While I was fondling her knockers, not nearly replete and still quite hard, I felt Bella's ta-tas tilting against me like a windmill in silent giggles.

"What?"

"_Shhhh."_ She pursed my mouth closed with two fingers. "What's that I hear?"

All I could hear was myself, with strident intakes, getting all fucking worked up again.

"_Hmmm_," Bella hummed and rooted to my nipple, making me rise from the bed to her mouth, "Well, I don't hear any car alarms going off, Eddie." She ran her tongue around my pap and bit down.

How well I remembered I'd guaranteed her an unheard-of orgasm in her Tax Shack. With prowess, I leapt over her, "Is that a challenge, Miss Swan?"

Giggling, working her way beneath me so all of our gluttonous parts met, she parlayed, "Might-could be, _Mister Cullen._"

_Oh, I was going to make sirens, alarms, and even those long-jawed, loopy loup-garu in Goose Creek bay at the moon by the time I let up on her!_

I went straight to work, spreading Bella out, licking her and sucking her from her dainty toes, all over her legs, paying special attention to the insides of her thighs and back down to her knees. At her waist, paving a wet road over the indentation before I rolled her over, sat above her thighs, cosying my cock between the cushions of her ass while I nipped and took huge palmfuls of her bottom, kissing along the cleft until she yelped!

When she was a keening mess thrashing below me, I fucked her. Harder, faster, more wild than the first time. Holding her hips, laying out between her legs, scattering my open mouth up her spine where I ended gasping into her neck, a tight bow that locked in a long, loud moan when she orgasmed from the inside out.

Lackadaisical, she sprawled out, barely leaving room for me. I was still unsatisfied with the results but consoled myself with, "You know," I spooned against her, grabbing a tit and an ass cheek, "this place is probably soundproof or something."

"You think?" Bella reclined into me, smacking her lips to my throat like a lazy kitten.

"Yeah. You were pretty fucking loud, so that's the only thing that could possibly explain the lack of car alarms going off," I snuggled my smile against her shoulder, warming my face.

"I did _not_ scream, Eddie," she huffed.

Pulling her right into me, I tweaked her nipples and chuckled when she gasped, "Oh, but you did love. It was something along the lines of: _Eddie Cullen has the most gigantic goddamn penis in the GALAXY!"_

She swatted at my toying hand indignantly, "I did _not!_"

"Darlin', you did too," put off from her nibs, I made way for her pussy.

She slowly opened to my soft touch, "Yeah, well, don't let it go to your head."

Later, after she'd napped, and I'd fondled at my ease, Bella yawned and turned into me, sleepily stroking under my eyes, "You hungry, baby?"

I tickled in between her fingers and each knuckle with my tongue, her concern for my well being was touching. _Until she continued_, "Wouldn't want you to fall off the wagon."

I carried her over me as I fell to my back, growling ferally, "In that case, I'm _famished_!" I started bringing that sweet, wet little treasure between her thighs up so I could eat her out.

Squealing, Bella launched off of me and ran behind the nearest chair, "I thought you were a vegetarian!"

My cock bobbed as I stood, crouched, ready to pounce, "_Vag_etarian, maybe." As I advanced her brown eyes glowed and grew wide in mock fear.

"A man can't survive on pussy alone," she laughed, trying to rush past me.

I grabbed her round the waist, "But I intend to try!" I was about to lift her up in the air so she could straddle my face right then and there, but Bella's common sense intervened, "Go on, _lover_, get you something to eat. I can tell you're hungry."

I acquiesced, "Alright, yeah. I brought a liquid lunch anyway," I nodded to the cooler, thinking I'd just warm that shit up in the microwave like usual.

Sitting in the chair, Bella frowned, "You're not drinking that in here, are you?"

I jutted one leg, accentuating my full and really fucking hard, seemingly unstoppable erection, fists on my hips, "Why not? You eat in front of me all the time, and I _really_ hate the smell of food."

With her elbows to her knees, her legs widened, her nipples almost brushing her thighs, I still had half a mind to eat her minge instead. "Oh! I hadn't thought of that."

I just winked at her, picked up my cooler and started towards the sitting room, hoping I didn't spill any blood during my repast because I didn't want to pay extra, and that meant I'd have to call on my own personal Cleaner.

A subtle, "_Oh my sweet baby Jesus,_" interrupted my thoughts – _why was she always referring to that goombah when I was the fucker who'd caused her aroused reactions?_ Realizing Bella was staring at my hard-on, I gave her a nice profile of my shaft, "What was that?"

Her mouth was agape and her eyes half-mast. She seemed unable to function beyond licking her lips.

Bunching my muscles, I stared at her while I sent a couple pumps up and down my meat. Happy with her, "_Oh-my-god-Eddie,_" I sauntered out of the room for my midnight snack, wanting to get back to her as quickly as possibly because she'd begun fingering her nipples like they were rosary beads.

I finished fast and found Bella in the bathroom brushing her teeth. I almost gave her a moment of privacy but thought better of it. Holding out my own toothbrush, I took in the flush of her body, the roll of her hips, the dip of her waist, the pucker of her nubbies that were looking thoroughly sucked. My cock thrummed again, getting ready for round three. She squirted a dollop of toothpaste onto my brush and I squirmed, thinking of her cunt squirting when she came.

Plugging my nose against the manky minty taste, I brushed my teeth hastily while Bella giggled at me. Rinsing my mouth with a splash of water that felt like grit and dirt, I flicked the bristles and sent a smattering of wet paste over Bella's tits. _Bubba would freak the fuck out with all the germs flying around the room!_

She rallied by cupping her hand under the tap and splashing me with a rainbow of water.

"Oh, it's _on_, Bella," with sinister intent, I twisted up a towel and whipped it against her ass, lovin' the marks immediately raised on her susceptible flesh.

Like the goddamned concubine she was, she fell to her knees and circled my cock with her closed mouth, noisily closing her lips over my head, moaning and looking up at me. Just as I was about to lose my load, _already_, she stood, ran to the bedroom and opened her legs with her hands framing her pussy, "You want this?"

It didn't matter I'd just had her twice, my cock jerked towards her and my eyes turned an unholy shade of jet black. I tilted my head to watch her run her fingertips up the domain of her gash, "Yeah, Right. Fucking. Now." Each dark word was punctuated by my prowl.

Her hair flew like feathery wings over her shoulders as she teased, "You ready, Eddie?"

I assaulted her hips, her back, her beatific-fucking-bottom, and lifted her up, up, up. Her pussy level with my lips, I tugged her labia into my mouth, swirled over her clit back and forth, and then tongued her. Thighs on my shoulders, heels hitting my back, her hair wrapped around my forearm. She turned into a tight python, "For the love of GOD!" she shouted.

Shouldering out of her clamp, I slid Bella back down me, widened my stance, waited a half-second for the climatic wash to ripple through her. A deep, drenching kiss gathered her choppy breaths to my rugged need and I breathed into her, "I'm _always_ ready."

I tunneled into her.

I bit my lips and frowned and went more slowly than I wanted. _At first._

Pulsing inside her, fencing in and out, rubbing my pelvis into her hips when we touched completely, I walked Bella to the wall and held her arms out.

_Hell yes!_

Scooping her up with my cock, sinking back to the balls of my feet, a stampede of craving made me so tense with yearning as I watched her mouth open, her eyes close, her heartbeat defibrillating in her chest and at the base of her neck.

I sped, her hands locked up high above her head, one thigh around my hips, the other manacled against the wall, her back so beautifully arched, opening her!

I clipped her clitoris with my pubic hair, my hard bone, pushing her further up the wall with every ridiculous thrust. I let her wrists go, and those petite hands, so strong, talented, womanly, ran over my back and pulled my ass so I knew she wanted me harder, faster and closer.

Bellowing a black hole into the cosmos, when I came, I was totally fucking staggered! I almost dropped her. It felt like bottle rockets going off, Catherine Wheels. Threshing against me, this time, Bella screamed gustily, "_Mary Queen of Scots, EDDIE!"_

_Well, that was a new one._

Carrying her to the bed, I shirked her inside and followed.

Bella snuggled close and whispered, "_Shhh, _what's that?"

I muted my groan, thinking, '_I'd be happy to go at you again to prove my point, Bella.'_

She giggled sleepily into my chest, "I'm sure I heard a siren."

My smile was uncontainable, "_You're_ a siren, Circe."

Sagging against me, sapped of energy, Bella stretched, and I asked, "Tired?"

"_Mmmm._"

"Tender?" I cupped her mons and strolled my fingers over her still-engorged pussy, soothing her heat.

"_Ahhh, _like my own personal ice-pack." She shifted to my comforting caress. "Little sore, but very satisfied."

_Fuckin' A-yeah._

I braided our legs to another murmur from Bella, and she hiccupped before settling right down to sleep, wrapped all around me like a human, warm, womanly duvet.

For damn sure I kept my hand on her pussy while she slept because that shit was mine! Every so often I gently ran the very lightest touch from the pads of my fingertips over her shell-like body… not enough to wake her, but enough to excite her dreams, calm her puffy pussy, because I needed her in full _working order_ by morning, if not earlier.

_Best fucking day of my life, ever!_

_

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~Sad Rie , fewer reviews last time. C'mon now, won't you give a good strokin' to Eddie's badly bruised…_ego_?~

And, thank y'all awesome babes for every single word you've written me or Eddie, or Bubba, Jizz…please keep it coming!

**AngryBadgerGirl **(affectionately known as AwesomeBodaciousfuck-Gorgeous by Rebelward) is going to _innerview_ Eddie for the next RWaC outtake. She's now accepting questions, please go ahead and PM her if you've got a burning desire to delve inside Eddie's…_mind._

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The **Indie Twific Awards** have started and I've been nommed a fuckton (thanks, ladies)! The first round of voting runs from 2/20 – 3/02. Here's what I got goin' on there:

Best Love Triangle Complete_:_ _Incarcerated_

Best Secondary Characterization_:_ _Incarcerated_ for Maria

Love Conquers All Novella_:_ _Looking Glass_ and _Incarcerated_

Canon or AU that Knocks Your Socks Off Complete: _Incarcerated _and _Looking Glass_

Love Conquers All Oneshot_:_ _Jealousy _and _Surrender_

Go Vote and check out the fics! There's a huge amount of undiscovered talent to be found. Theindietwificawards(DOT)com.

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My _Incarcerated _was recced on The Fictionators last week; thanks dazzledtina, kassiah, and MFer! www(DOT)fictionators(DOT)com/2010/02/incarcerated-by-goldenmeadow(DOT)html

And _Comeuppance_ was featured on the Lickable Lustorium by my lady AmeryMarie, link on my profile.

_Lonely Girl_, John Holt: www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=gkqvRkL4JwA

As ever, y'all are welcome to drop by the DW thread!

Cheers, Rie~


	18. Put a Little BIG South in Your Mouth

Ta Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta for being absolutely stupendous, all the damn time (even when you want to kick my ass for extra long chapters and other ridiculousness)!

Disclaimer: Oh my fuck, how many times I gotta' say it? I own Eddie/Confeddie/Rebelward. I do not own Twilight.

~~So, AngryBadgerGirl came all the way to Cainwhore to make sure the DW was rockin'. And this is what happened -- a little collab between Eddie and ABG~~

Rie: We're all well aware that one Miss AngryBadgerGirl has the hots for Eddie (or you would, if you slackers would bother to tweet). I was honored when she offered to interview him, until I realized, belatedly, she just wants to get him in the same room as her, _alone._

Eddie: Whatever. We tweet-sex, twat-fuck, twitter-tangle all the time. She can have me when she wants me...I'm thinking, Rie, she's actually interested in what I have to say.

Rie: *raises one eyebrow, 'cause she's talented like that* Anything else you want to add?

Eddie: Like?

Rie: You seem to get your rocks off on playing around with the AngryBadgerGirl/ABG acronym...

Eddie: Oh yeah, _that_. Well, I think I'm perfectly within my rights to mess with her, the woman done fucks with me all the time, and you know I got a way with words as well as my-

Rie: *motions for him to zip his lip, button his luscious mouth*

Eddie: What the fuck now?

Rie: *whispers* _She's here!_

Eddie: Oh my Christ, are you bouncin' in your seat?

AngryBadgerGirl: Well, hello there, _big boy_.

Eddie: Well fuck me hard but not up the ass, I don't know whether to jump her or hump her!

Rie: *stifles a snort and grabs a Schlitz and a bag of pork rinds she stole offa' Carl*

* * *

**Put a Little (BIG) South in Your Mouth**

Looking fucking hot as hell, the many-talented MILF began the interview not-so-subtly, "So, Eddie... I've been dying to talk to you. Well, not literally, so try not to look at me like I'm a TV dinner."

"Ha!" I pointed my long, talented, index finger at her, "You're one to talk, Absolutely-Beautiful-Glamazon. You've been eyeing me up like the last bottle of bin-bottom Syrah since you walked through my door. And anyway, I am a _hungry man_, vamp, _what-the-fuck-ever_."

I could tell she was trying to take offense, but the way she wiped the lascivious grin off her striking lips gave lie to her frown, "I do have a bunch of things I'm curious about with you, _Eddie._" She breathed my name in such a way that my prick did its Pavlov's dog trick, trying to roll over inside my dusty, ain't-been-warshed-by-Maw-yet jeans. "You seem like an enigma, wrapped in a nutshell, covered in horny."

_Fuckin' got that right, woman!_

Beckoning with my fingers, I motioned the lovely lady to the porch couch, "Bring it on, Awesome-Beamish-Girl -- you ever drank that? It's smooth, with a full head, rather like me, Beamish that is." Though I'd tweeted her to an orgasm or two before, I was lovin' her heavy-lidded reaction to my innuendo, but the chick looked thirsty and I knew I was, "Before we start this shit, I need a drink. You?"

Crossing her legs and smoothing down her bohemian skirt -- _or some such flirtatious bullshit Bella also had in her wardrobe designed to make me hard and horny all over --_ around her deliciously rounded thighs. I growled low in my throat, ingesting the sight of her full, voluptuous form while Amazingly-Bountifully-Gorgeous nodded and reached into her leather hold-all. Damn Americans were so fucking health conscious it was difficult telling meat from bone. Not so with the sensual, exotic Miss F. Oh yeah, she told me her name soon as she walked in the place, with a feathery breath against my ear as she stood on her toes. Again with the sexy intonation, making my boner leap against my button-flies, "I would _love_ a drink, _Rebelward_. Can I just let this chill for a few?" Grabbing a bottle of Two-Buck-Chuck Merlot, she rested it sideways across my lap, her thoughts ranging from, _"Mmm, so cold," _touching the inseam of my pants, to, _"But fuck! He makes me so damn hot!"_

Another shift of the bottle on my beef, and she was satisfied, "Thank you, sweetie. I'll pop that cork when we're done with this interview thingy."

_Thingy, pop, CORK!_

Oh, hell-on-Hotwheels, this was gonna' be a long-ass night.

Smacking my lips, I felt the cold bottle of vino about to crack against my cool cock-of-infamy, "Before we start, can I add my own disclaimey-thingamijig, Absolutely (_maybe? hopefully?)_-Bare-Gash?"

She settled her long, feastful legs and really fucking fine ass further into the cushions and smiled like Marilyn Monroe, or Mona Lisa, or Venus, or basically any bitch who knew exactly how to get to a man, "Of course, darling, disclaim, reclaim, exclaim. Riff on, baby. But you know you can call me Miss F., or even _Madame F._, if you wish. Like the _jinns_ of the old Arabian tales from long ago, I could very well inform you that your wish is my command, my eternally enigmatic and enticing _emir_." She batted her eyelashes, a coquette in her element, and then regaled me with thoughts of _I Dream of Jeannie and her Major Master._

Sheepishly hanging my head, I nodded, "Yeah, but... _um_." Well how to explain this pre_dick_ament? Miss F. was bad enough, but Madame F.? That little 'F' had me wonderin' about the woman and her name -- it could stand for felicitations, Feliz Navidad, fleece (like her bush, should it turn out to be non-Brazilian style), _fellate_, fuck-me-hard! I just knew some sinful shit was behind her abbreviated moniker; didn't take a trained monkey-slapper like me to understand the bitch who wrote TNGUS had some fucking good tricks up her sleeves, in her hands, and down her panties. Not that I ever read that shit, but Rie liked to tease me with ABG's tasty sex scenes -- there were a hell of a lot of blow jobs and carpet-munching, so I let it ride. "Uh, okay, maybe. I might-could sometimes call you Miss F."

_Christ, was I blushing?_

Someone better call on Bubba, seemed I'd caught the human virus from him!

Like an Eastern European Countess, she nodded. Like a goddamn regular visitor of the Double Wide, Miss F. grinned.

I began, with an almost-cold-as-me PBB -- _special mix of blood and beer_ -- at hand, "Now, I know this is 'serious' fanfiction and all, _jest excuse me while I snort._ So I wanna make it clear as the un-tinted windshield on my Bronco that I ain't gonna coerce you to do anything you don't want to do, I'm not even thinkin' about your..._ blood._ _There's other, much more slippery and lustrous liquidity that comes to mind in your presence. _Especially when you say things like 'pop' and 'cork' and '_call me Madame F'_. You know how my mind wanders to _accliteration." And how I wanted to demonstrate my verbal, linguistic skills on her labia.  
_

_  
_Fuck-a-damn, this hot little number clearly had _my _number as she toed off her heels and wound her calves beneath her thighs, loosening the now-gaping neckline of her formerly demure blouse, "Ooh, listen to you. Alluringly alliterative. Sublimely seductive." Slowly so as to tempt me further, while placating the wildebeest huffing inside my chest, she reached over my crotch. "_What?_ Eddie, come now, I just needed to rotate my wine. You know. So it chills evenly."

_Yeah, right. You believe that as you observe my undercover dick levitate._

And again with the twitch-shift while Miss Frost-my-pussy-with-your-cock smirked, and I swear my dick did a triple-take! Seeking the upper hand, I spread my thighs, palmed my broad penis to a more upright position and asked, "Did you say 'rotate'?" I jerked my hips up, reached beneath my waistband and adjusted my shaft to demonstrate, patted my thighs in invitation, "_Sit 'n' Spin _comes to mind, my Angelic-Bodacious-Gremlin."

Miss about-to-FUCK-with my head flushed, "Why are we here again? Interview, fanfiction," she laughed awkwardly but never looked more tantalizing. "Oh right. _Ahem._"

I wanted to give the lady a minute to gather her thoughts, seein' as how her mind was towed to my truncheon. "Yeah, you just catch your breath while I go through my notes." Clearing my throat, coughing up some striped possum fluff, I checked the position of my dandy cock and carried on, _while stroking_, "So I had V _and Vi_ look over the questions first. _Shit yeah_, I did. I got me a green room and all. Okay, fuck... it's more like my nauseating turquoise-colored bathroom in the DW, surrounded by a ziggurat of Hustler and Silhouette, but whatever, it all works the same. _Oh, and shout out to winterstale for sending Bubs another damn pansy Silhouette novel, because that's just what he needs._ Any-fuck, them guardians of mine already done warned me to drink fast, think little, and answer as discreetly as possible. I can see you're trying to pin my prayerful huge prick to the wall like a moth's meaty thorax. I ain't happy about this, Ain't-Been-Groped(yet)**.** Not...Happy...At...All. I thought we were fuck-outback-the-outhouse-buddies!"

Taking offense, Anal-clitical-Blossoming-Greediness grabbed her flask-o-wine from my crotch and wrenched off the screw top, glaring at me, "What? Fuckin' told you I was classy, right?" Dumbly I nodded, my cock bobbed as well, freed from the glass weight. Miss Fizzy took up a jam jar from the porch flaw and blew into it, muttering, _"Eh, good enough,"_ and poured her wine right up to the brim.

I laughed at her insouciance.

She chuckled back, "Rebelward, you just like us downhome gals, don't you? Doesn't matter where I come from... you're a breed apart, but a _man-vampire-whatever_ I understand."

After a decent glug, she licked the liquid from her stained lips, "And yeah, we _are_ buddies! But you know how chicks are... humans, vamps, young, old... badger. We have these ethereal things called feelings and emotions. These things cause us to ponder the world a little more closely and demand we dedicate at least a little bit of our day to endeavors that are slightly more strenuous intellectually than pulling back a PBR on the porch couch and making fart noises. And hey, if I can get Bella some four-one-one on you, I'mma get it for her. 'Cos sorry, baby, but chicks before dicks."

What the motherfuck-load? I pulled back my PB-Blood brew and blew across to Madame Flick-my-dick-with-her-tongue, because that shit was supposed to hypnotize whores, "That's crotch-rot! Bros before hoes, everybody knows." _Jesus -- it was like a fucking Doc Seuss/Leonard Cohen medley!_ "Cocks before Fox. Appen_dage_ before vadge. 'Sides, no need to be sheepish and pretend you're looking out for Bella. Any tweetard who follows us knows what you're up to. I ain't complainin' though."

_Crickets._ The little wee bastards. They deafened the silence as Atop-my-Big-Glans gave me the serious hairy eyeball.

And yet more crickets.

And here she thought she was doing a service to me? Whipping my meatiness into a topsy-turvy frenzy so all I wanted to do was bust out of the trailer, to find Bella, so I could bust out of my blue jeans?

Now I was irate, as well as aroused.

Not a good thing for a vampire to be.

_Then, finally_ -- shit, I almost welcomed an interrogation after that intense silence -- "Question Number One." Oh my life, were we on _Who Wants to Be a Millionaire_ suddenly? So seriously, she asked, "What's your first memory as a vampire? What's your last as a human?"

_Oh, turd in a punch bowl._

"Huh." I raked my hands through my hair, those penny-tarnished locks that slags of all ages imagined jerking in their fists as I went down on them (_as fucking if)_. "I mean, I don't really want to talk about my past, _love._" I shook my shaggy head in denial, observing Mizz Fizz-make-me-wanna'-Jizz reach out to finger my copper-top before she pulled back and fingered her stupid damn notebook instead..._whatever._ "But, supposin' I pled the fifth on my first go 'round with Vanessarae, I might owe y'all something'?"

_Now_ she was all lovely and cajoling, easing her way into my guarded emotions, tryin' to make me answer the questions from Hell's Archangels, with her the Queen Bitch. "Aw, sweetness," she said with a pout, "You ought to know by now I would never judge you harshly. I might spank you harshly and go through a few good leather crops doin' it, but judge you to be a bad or unworthy person? Never. You are who you are, baby boy. When you're balls out, I'm chest out. No lie. So come on, tell ole ABG a little something about the person you used to be when your heart was still beating. Please? For me? With my now long-gone cherry on top?"

_Of course, she just had to mention 'cherry'. A well-excited clitoris resembled nothin' more'n a tiny, little cherry peeking out from the swollen hood shrouding it.  
_

_  
_I bit my lower lip, hoping to gain increasingly Annoyed-Badger-Girl's favor. Couldn't we just carry on with the titty-lation and forget this emoting bullcrap?

Totally comfortable in these Deadneck surrounds, she simply slurped back the final swigs of her 4-for-a-saw-buck-chuck and gurgled the last mouthful before grinning at me in silent demand to _deliver unto me some answers before I extract them from you in ways you could never fathom._

More and more uncomfortable, I slouched into the couch and yanked on a new wide-mouth. A Mickey's. Damn only time I put my lips to a man...I wasn't no Equal Opportunity Fucker, not like egalitarian Jizzper, _no sirree._

"Last memory as a human... my mum, Elizabeth Masen of the elite Chicago Masens, put a kiss, a dream-like peck, to my forehead. I was seventeen and the year was 1918. Of what I recall, the family were founders of the Northern City. My father is so much less than an apparition, no more than a grimoire in my remembrance." I sat up, refocused, realizing I wasn't alone. "Hey now, don't be thinkin' I'm going all pussy on you, Anti-Bitch-Goddess! To the real meat of the matter; I know I'd never even beaten beef at that time. _ I'd never touched or kissed a woman. _I thought I had all the time in the world, and-- _motherfuckin' bullshit_---I was too prudent to take matters into my own hand."

I bashed my head against the cushions pilfered by Alice, the precious little psychic, aching to rid the debris of my past that looked like trash littered on Highway 17 North. Glowering at Ass-Buttered-Goodness, "We-ell, Carl was faggot-ass Carlisle then, wasn't he? And my last instance on Earth as a human was bitten by him puncturing my palm with my mother's ring, before he slashed my neck with his crocodile slice. Dicing my artery, _sucking my blood out, propelling his poison in.  
_

_  
_"You wanna know what that shit felt like?

_"Really?_

"Like I'd been kicked in the nuts with steel-capped boots. Like I'd been titty-twisted so hard my heart ripped out of my chest. Like my cock would explode in travesty, and my flesh would peel off like in a single coil from a paring knife. Like a cocksuckin' apple peel.

"My first memory as a vampire? I was thrust from the pan into the pyre! The world was too clear and yet wavered. The room I woke to, an undead, black magic, hoodoo zombie, little more than my own tomb. My maker, my reaper, my father, my sire sat uncomfortably across from me, his hands pointed down, as if in approach of a slavering rabid dog.

"Curling my lips, I took a breath, and it filled nothing of me.

"There was a scent, beyond the expensive leather bindings of first editions lining the library's shelves, so much like the human home I'd never know again... a cloying, gripping perfume igniting my innards!

"Everything of me was solid stone... entombed, never to be atoned. I started with quill shivers, trembles growing, growls saturating air I didn't need anymore.

_"He_ bade me hold my breath.

_"He_ held my head and inspected my healed wounds.

_"He_ suspected my bloodthirst and gave me almost-dead animals to banquet over.

_"I_ was manipulated, made anew, a reliquary, a relic.

"Idyll hands, snappin' teeth, nefarious mind.

"That's what I remember, Aggravatin'-Beatin'-Grueling baby.

"Fuck me! Enough of this pussy-whipped, self-hate, shock-horror, cunt-asshole twatwaffle!"

I smirked and ran my tongue across my lips, lowered my eyes to edit and retain Awesome-Bootylicious-and-Gams to my wank-bank-spunk-trunk. "What else you got for me, baby?"

Miss Flagellator pulled out a twee handkerchief--so not in keeping with her persona I half-suspected her of raiding Maw's linen drawer a la boot-shod-bat-shit-crazy Alice. How the hell was I to know? She might-could have the same klepto tendencies as the kyphing clairvoyant. Wiping a few trickles of tears from her cheeks, she wasn't only half-taken by my confession, "Eddie, while I am mesmerized by your lip licking, I have to say that I don't know whether to be scared of you or cry for what you'd endured physically. Even now, you continue to endure a tortured psyche because of your belief you are soulless and an abomination. I may be angry, Eddie, but I got a boatload of pathos for you. Okay, this makes me think of a new question."

The bottle now resting between my thighs was near frozen to a grape slushy, but she didn't care one bit. Topping off her glass with a Mr. Freeze vintage, she asked me for a straw, "Bendy one, if you have it, please."

Fuck yeah, I had me some bendy straws! In all the colors of the rainbow even, lining the larder shelves. Maw sure liked her branch and bourbon sucked through one of them things, and I found it easier to get my piss on, after pounding my prick for too long and too hard, drinking through one of those things while my fist recovered.

Sliding the hollow piece into her jar full o' fermented fruit, I watched Madame not-gonna'-put-up-with my-Fibbing extend the segmented neck. She did it so languorously; I felt the urge to stroke my stick in the same manner.

She pursed her lips and sucked. I clenched my fists and tried to breathe.

"Easy there, hoss. We're only at the second question. Now then: does the need for sex, being a ladies' man, charming women with your swagger--is that just a way to escape all the bad stuff you feel? Believe it or not, I know a human Edward _just like that_. He fucks to forget, and I suspect you do the same. Is it possible being with Bella will well and truly help you change the way you view yourself?" As if the question itself was not enough, Awesome-Below the Belt-and-Gregarious chick adjusted her wicked fuck-you-in-the-stacks--_and you're damned right she was stacked like a brick shit-house--_ tortoiseshell specs and raised one incredibly erotic eyebrow. _Wait. What? How was a friggin' eyebrow erotic? _She was _so _not fooled, and I'd already deployed my filthy sexiness, my _innellectuality_, my sad, sad, woebegone tales, not to mention my panty dropper wife beater plus low-rise denims, and undone boot straps.

A bit of respite came in the form of Miss Fierce with her imagining, "_Ooh, I'd like to kneel right down between his legs in front of the faux velveteen couch with its brown-on-white hunting scenes and tie those damn laces with my tongue, before I..." _Looking all chagrined and shit, her Turkish Delight eyes widened, "Oh hell, what? Did I say something?" _Drool._

I wanted to commit larceny on her titties, but made myself ponder the question. "_Aw, man._ Still with the heavy shit? What say we just make out for a bit on the porch couch? This fucker ain't seen any action since Bubba had one of his bouts of fake IBS. _No?_ Shit." I scrubbed my face with my palms, "I really like fucking. You know? Having spent a cunt-lot of time as a virgin," I shivered, "bein' with a woman was an enormous release, _in more ways than one if you know what I mean._ But you're asking me what I'm going to think about myself in the future here in Cainwhore, with Bella. And I just can't answer that. I hope I can become the man-vampire-_thing_ she needs me to be. In spite of all my dicking around, and I don't regret that shit one mother-lovin' bit, I know she's more important to me than my truck, my guns, my blood-filled ice chest. _More important than my past._ And I ain't even gonna contemplate a future without her."

ABG sat with her mouth hanging open, just the right size for my dick, "Color me confounded! I think...Eddie...speechless isn't usually a word that describes me, but I _think_ you just gave me a genuine _braingasm_. You said something sexy, and _yet...meaningful_? Can a vamp run a temperature? Get some kind of illness that makes him talk all funny?"

_Eh, she'd have to ask Em about that, wouldn't she?_

_"_By the way, baby, I know this is _hard _for you," and fuck-my-life if she didn't emphasize 'hard', "So here's another secret, just for you. My given name means _flower bud. _A touch of the ironic, exotic, and erotic, yes. Not much flowery or newish and innocent about me, so it's not exactly a tidbit I share with the world, but I'd share it with you...if you wanted it, of course."

Oh, Christ. _Oh Hell!_ Now I was imagining her as my own personal rosebud, a tight-lipped thing I could carry in my pocket to wrap around my dick at will! Way too fucking aroused, I fumed, "Thank you for sharing, _blossom, _but you just made my sitchiation about ten thousand times worse."

Quite pleased with herself, the regal tease moved on like Oprah with a time limit before another commercial break, "Question number three. Tell me about... _um_... your first time. With a woman. _Not your hand._ What she a vamp or a human? What was your first time with a human like? Did you eat her and then...eat her?"

Oh hells yeah, I could get behind this brand of devilry. I leered, leaning forward. Licking my mouth from deceptive corner-to-corner, watching the Anointed-Beaver-Gal's hips swivel infinitesimally, I smoothed, "I don't have a Christ complex." Sitting back, I pushed my hands behind my head, enjoying ABG's rad reaction to the ripple of my muscles as I sailed her off course, "My first? Well, I was thirsty, and the _carnality_ came in a close second to my need to drink." My fists tightened, my eyes darkened in deviant memory, a swelling, lustrous, purely animal moment, "She _was _human. I knew neither her name, nor her game. She wasn't a wayfarer; she'd done no wrong..._ aside from walking across my path_."

"She'd smelled so divine; deer, Bambi, Rocky the Raccoon, none of that shit could compare! In England, the stench of smoked kippers abounding, the Gothic masterpiece of Whitby Abbey a fortress upon the cliff at my back, East Yorkshire, a maiden. _Iron Maiden._ My teeth like curved steel girders locking to her tits, her thighs, swallowing and kidnapping her sighs."

My hands braided behind my neck, my deadly eyes rose slowly, in dementia, asking and pleading silently, "_I don't really want to talk about this, BadgerGirl."_

She simply hooked me with her dimples, "The truth sets you free, Eddie, even for a man like you. Just sayin'. I'm only bringing this up, and disbelieve all you like, but I never once, while reading your story, got the sense your attraction to Bella was ever like that. She was, is, and always will be, different. Your attraction to her has more meaning, more substance, and absolutely no brutality. Call me Barbara Walters, 'cos this shit just got real, baby. A monster is what it is. It does not change. But _you_ have." Inclining toward me, her expressions was dead serious, her voice lowered, "This is the part where you do your song and dance about hating this emo drivel and chicks being all full of their nonsense _feelings_ and all, and maybe I'm not as old as you, but I am old enough to know when a man is deeply entrenched in his own horse shit," she said matter-of-factly before swilling the rest of her wine and letting out a satisfied '_ahhhh'._

My eyes widened to Mama Brown's dinner plate size while I mumbled, "Well now I friggin' see you came by your pen name honestly, right? _Fuckin' A._"

Miss Fister reached over toward my craving cock again, tentatively this time, winked, and spun her wine. All I needed was a two-word invitation,_ Fuck Me _would do. She followed up her lush brush of my shaft with the reveal of..._ a paddle?_ Shittin'-on-the-crapper and bring-your-own-baby-Jesus...where the cunt had she hidden that? At least it wasn't tucked inside a damn nasty Vera Bradley tote like all of Maw's toys. She'd mentioned tannin' my hide earlier, but I didn't think she was serious. Heck, part of me was overcome with arousal, like when I watched, and jacked off, to Bella taxidermying. That shit had me squirmin'!

This was too damn much because I knew for a fucking hard fact bitch didn't read _Master of the Universe_, so I hoped to high hell there would be no silver balls produced. _What?_ I kept up with the fanfic gossip...what the frig else was I to do while Bella went to school, worked, and--worst of all--slept?

She struck her palm a few times with the bat and then threw it aside, laughing, "Eddie, I am not going to go all Dominatrix on your fine ass. You kidding me? That's the least little thing I want to do to you. I'm a lover, and a purveyor," she was thinking, _Yeah right, just say it aloud... I'm a Pervert!, _"of men. A sarcastic but sumptuous woman. I'd only ever unleash 'a can of whup-ass' if you asked for it. Besides, I'm more the type to coddle than coerce. Get more flies with honey and all. Like Scheherazade with her sultan, I'd much rather be subtle about getting my way with gentle blows to your mind than to your behind. Men, undead, still breathing, whatever...they tend to have a few blind spots any smart girl can suss out if she looks close enough. No need to be a direct, dominant disciplinarian. Just a clever coquette with charming colloquy.

"I'mma charm those answers out of you, sweet boy. You want me to charm your _snake_, dontcha?" she asked, tilting her head and licking her lips slowly from corner to corner, making me more acquiescent and hornier.

"So, about Bella. Aside from the physical attraction, and forgive me for asking you this, but please try and put your physical attraction for her out of your mind for a few seconds. Come on, you've got that crazy vampire brain in there that can hold ten thoughts at once, try letting one go for a minute. What is it about Bella, aside from her girly parts, that draws you to her? Don't say _la tua cantante_...or whatever. I don't buy that bullshit for a second. Okay, so maybe it isn't bullshit, but something you have no control over doesn't equate to emotional pull. What I'm trying to say is--if you love the girl, or think you do, or are scared shitless that you might, your choice--surely there's _something_ about her personality. What is it? See, that question was only three words long. Easy-peasy."

_Great._ "My fucking dick's about to have an aneurysm, and you've decided to go all soft-serve on me. Tits, gams, ass. _See?_ That answer was only three words long. Easy fackin' mushy peas easy. _Oh my Christ!_ You're not going to let up, are you? Well, hell. Bella's bold and beautiful. _What? _Don't fucking look at me like that. Yeah, damn sure I watch the soaps, and that sewage kinda leaks into your brain, all tainted subversive message-like. A bit like whoremongering Republican propaganda."

Angsty-Bold-and-Glassy-eyed chick cleared her throat loudly and glared at me, "Oh, for the love of a chubby baby Jesus and all his fat rolls, Eddie! _Answer _the fucking question, before you _really_ get me worked up, young-old man!"

I stewed, and considered Skyping my lifelines, "Jesus H. I ain't goin' sissified on this. #1. She's fucking gorgeous, right? But not in a pre-made, plastic-bitch, daddy-bought-silicone way. Bella's stunning in her soul, as well as her fucking whole 's been through a fucking huge amount of shit, raised herself up from the dungheap that her misguided _mom _piled on her, and when most chicks would become hard-hearted, uncaring, and unforgiving, she retained some fucking crazy sort of innocence wrapped up in just the right amount of sauciness with a goddamn good ol' dash of confidence and righteousness! For fucking sure, there's her little underbelly, the way she hides from other's thoughts with her iPotty always present -- _least when the fucker's functionin' after an unplanned midnight dip in her toilet --_ but that part of her, the escapism, just calls to me even more. She's sensitive, but not a doormat. She's sexy, but nobody's bitch. She owns herself. _Bella_, of all the women and femme vamps I've encountered, is strong enough to tell me to fuck right off with her middle finger raised high while her legs open to welcome me into the pussyfied promise land.

"She expects a whole heapa' lot from me. Because _she knows_ she deserves it. And I fuckin' _love_ that about her.

"Oh, and she ain't afraid to suck my vamp cock. That adds about ten thousand stars to her 'plus' column.

_  
"Ha. _Whoops. Never got past #1, did I?

"Pass me the white rabbit, babe. And don't give me any of that Beatles bullshit. The only Strawberry Fields I want are right between Bella's legs."

The lady wondered, "Sooo, it's her no-nonsense attitude and penchant for peensicle plumping? I knew there were so many reasons why I loved you," she said with a tinge of the sarcastic. Nearly undertone, she muttered to herself, _'I'll never get a more substantial answer out of Eddie, by bra hook, front clasp, or hip crook. Maybe a big bewb rub?_ '

_"Hedi, be! Ah, benim güzel canavar, senin şeytan tüyü beni kandırmaz!"_ She ranted twat? Did she just go Exorcist on me? I didn't know whether to break out the holy water or run for the hills.

Thankfully, ABG took point again, shoving her little Damien/Regan moment aside, "Easy, boy, that was just a bit of my _native tongue._ _Come off it! Oh, my beautiful monster, your demon charms do not fool me. _So, you okay there? Good. I've also noticed Bella is a very strong-willed, intelligent young lady. Aside from her mind being closed to you, it's also very much her own. Now she's made some rather bold moves in regards to her interactions with you. If she's pissed, she shows it. If she's pleased with you, she shows it. If she's turned on... you get the picture. So, my question is, what do you think Bella sees in you? She seems awfully motivated to get her way when she wants to."

Handling my cock in its cloth case, I raised one eyebrow, "Nuff said?"

Aggrieved and-Beyond-Glacial woman asked, "Seriously, Eddie? You honestly believe your woman only wants you for your cock? She better not read this innerview 'cos the shit will hit the fan faster than your vamp hand can take care of you during solitary moments when you're missing the aforementioned woman. Don't kid a kidder, baby. And don't kiss my caboose to try and get around really answering this question. I want a better reason than your protuberant peensicle, and I'mma get it."

I met the corner of the couch, as far away from her perception as possible, "Christ in Cracker Barrel! Okay, _I don't know what she sees in me._ I really can't even friggin' fathom it. Especially not now that she knows exactly what breed of beast I am. _Well_, except that whole sexcapade at Kiawah Island might have somethin' to do with her attraction to me. Shut it, alright? I know you ain't putting up with that shit," I grumbled, thinking, _'Kiss your caboose? Honey, I'd lick your grits if it'd shut you the hell up for a second_.' "I guess she admires my loyalty to my family, maybe she sees some potential in me, some of that crap I used to be. In a weird way, I'm safe to her -- even though I had a mind to drain her dry the first time I saw her -- but I try to protect her. In my own way, I s'pose, I cherish her, and she can tell even through my stupid bullshit, like when I break into her house to steal all of her battery operated boyfriends and shit like that. You know, even though I fucked up those Piggy Paula Dean cupcakes, she was real horny after that, because at least I made the effort, right? When I'm with her, I want to make her feel secure and good, sexy, and fucking... _loved_, maybe. But I gotta add, the chemistry is gaddamn astronomical! That don't hurt either.

"There, you satisfied?"

_ABG reclined with her paw over her face, quietly sniffling. Extracting yet another monogrammed linen kerchief from betwixt her cleavage, she blew her nose loudly. Rather like a trumpet.  
_

_  
This strumpet crumbcake was a bit endearing, sometimes._

"I'm sorry, love. I need a moment." She wiped her eyes, cleared her throat. "If there's one thing that melts this badger's steely resolve, it's a non-beating man's heart when it's so full of...heart? I simply weep copiously at the tenderness!" Clutching her hanky, she fanned her face, "This is worse than listening to Elbow on repeat, I swear to the Lord above."

It was all I could do to fixate on my resolve _not to pounce._

Just as I was getting comfy, she took me to task again, "Alice's premonitions freak you the fuck out. Why is that? I mean, there are several outcomes possible. You could get destroyed. Does that scare you? Bella could be killed. I know you'd see yourself destroyed before you'd see that. Or, you could both be reason for the salvation of the undead. That's a big responsibility for a guy who just wants to jerk off and drink beer all day. Is it the idea of finally 'growing up' and not being an eternal seventeen-year-old that scares you? Is Bella the Wendy to your Peter Pan?"

_Peter-pud-wad?_ "Hell's-sakes, Peter-peeny-peen-Pan wore tights, so, _no, _I don't relate to the green-skirted fucker. Aside from Peter-less Pan, Alice only shows me shit she wants to. She's goading me. _She knows_ at least one possible outcome." I disentangled my tackle, unbuttoned my fly, rearranged my scrot and _discreetly _towed my yardarm to my thigh. "There's the prophecy, right? Bella could be our deliverance from the Brothers Grimm, or she could be our undoing. All I know is she's meant to be my woman, my mate. And there's a helluva lot of DC's story to come, lest we forget, with the humor... this shit, _my life_, is on the precipice.

"Do I want to die? I used to. Not now. I've been satchel-deep in Bella, licked and sucked her. I've made it through monstrous decades to find her. _I don't want to become human, I want to make her mine, forever._ But I guess we just have to see what Bella wants. That woman hurts my head, _both of 'em_."

"Though I'd like to monopolize your massive 'member', seems there's some inquiries from a few Rebelward fans. Shall we...?"

_Great, just what I fuckin' needed. I mean, the whores were usually nice, and generally couldn't wait to get in my pants, but it was like somethin' was in the water 'round here today because even my favorite hussy, ABG, was actin' all stroppy and shit._

"I'll take that as a yes, then." To my shrug of indifference, ABG kept going, "Here are a few questions from one of your devoted readers, RoseBella75:

_"I think the most burning question we all have for him is whether he's planning on turning ReBella like The Edward did his Bella (although you may want to leave out the comparison... he's a little touchy sometimes about not being considered THE Edward)."_

"Oh shit, Diane. You've done it now." Turning her face away from me, Agitated-Blissful-Glinda-the-Good-Witch stuck her fingers in her ears, "This oughta be good. Or really bad. Either way, angry Eddie turns this angry badger on. Don't judge me."

"Diane, I'm going to take Togaward's sheet and wrap it around your head. Better yet, I'm gonna' use the fucking thongs from those Grecian sandals you got your characters wearing to tie you to a bedstead before I take my time-"

ABG interjected, "Eddie, my sweet, succulent, sampling of sexy, you do try my patience. I've the temper of many, many generations of warriors, pillagers, fighters and downright haters flowing freely in me. Don't poke the badger. I mean, don't poke her like _this_. Talk or I'll show you the true meaning of _human_ blood-lust, of which my people have a long, glorious history!"

_Hmmm, note to self, Miss Filly is pretty damn cute when she gets all pissed off._ Concentrating more on Astoundingly-Bodacious-Tata's than the interrogation at hand I flippantly answered, "Figures one of you DW women had to bring up The Edward Sullen Cullen. Now, on that matter alone, I could unleash a torrent of cussing to make the chapel at Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal quake, but you know what? I won't, this time. Well, maybe, just a little: _mother-fucking-cunt-bitch-skank-bastard-jesus-sla__pper!_ Yeah. Like I said above, to All-Beautifulandwaytoofucking-Gregarious's last jibe, I certainly don't want to finish out this immortal life alone now, do I? But it sure as fuck ain't up to me... is it?"

_  
_Making some kind of note in her little pad, like she was a shrink or somethin', ABG gave another question from Diane:

_"Does he consider ReBella to be his soul-mate? If so, how does finding her affect his thoughts on the Volturi? While we're at it, what ARE his thoughts on the Volturi."  
_

_  
_One look at ABG, who was continuing to scrutinize me in a most disconcerting way, I scratched my head and reconsidered getting a mullet, _and_ answered the question because I was always one multi-taskin' motherfucker, "Soul-mate? Fuck if I know. I don't have a soul, right? So I guess that's off the table right there. I rarely get all worked up, but them Volturi don't make me go to my happy place (you know, the one where Bella's wearing that sweet-ass yellow dress sans panties and shit). I don't like the fact Bella has some funky forcefield going on with her mind, because hell if that ain't gonna make the Vultures think they're onto something there. They always had a boner for me; when they hear about her it's just going to get worse._  
_

_  
"Will he be sad to discard his "Southern Identity" when it comes time to move on, as they inevitably will?_"

I was pretty shocked at that one! Us Cullens not being in the South was like the Piggly Wiggly up and movin' its operations to France, and Pigs and Frogs just don't mix. "Who said anything about movin' on? I'm a Southern boy-vamp-_whatever _now. I'm not going anywhere. The vainglorious villainous Volturi can bring it to Cainwhore, and we'll be waiting. No more running. No ma'am."

With that bullfuckery out of the way, I finally figgered out what the hell ABG was up to... oh yeah I did. Tilting her head to the left, and then the right, she was thinking, _"Oh, if only he'd just turn a bit towards me-"_ she looked up and smiled brightly, knowing I could read her mind. I did as she silently requested, she worried her top lip with her tongue, squinted her eyes and held out her pencil to get the correct scale. Goddamn, the incorrigible Badger was pondering the exact dimensions of my cock. And having a pretty good crack at it too! _Well, I can easily guess by eye alone, my mother being a seamstress for so many years, the length of his thumb. When I times that by three, I can be fairly certain of what he's got going on under the hood, so to speak._

Lifting an eyebrow, I smoothly, lowly, inquired, "Got somethin' personal you wanna' ask me? You know, something off-the-record? _Hmmm?_"

"If I didn't know any better, _my sweet_, I'd suspect you were pilfering the pervy predilections right outta my prurient perception. And onto the next questions from April, aka 'Ape from the Double Wide', honey."

_Oh, thank fuck. Surely Miss Ape wouldn't come up with something too treacherous or tricky. If nothin' else, I reminded her of her own Lay-Z-Boy companion, her husband Red'n, short for Redneck a'course._

_"So, Eddie. Now that you've been on the intimate side of business with the taxidermy terror, what are your thoughts on her still being very good friends with the Cherokee Cholo?"_

_Fuck's sake._ "Ape, babe, why are you trying to go all serious? You're a damn fine woman and wonderful friend to me and Rie; _your _job is to git out your pom-poms, much like _my _nine-to-fiver is to whack off. Heh. That jackal-faced jester gets me all raw and jealous. I'd like to impound that stray shamanistic little shit, or at least forbid Bella from seeing him, but I ain't Sheriff You-Don't-Know-Shit-From-Shinola, so that's not my job. And I don't need to be rilin' up my woman more than I already do. Oh, and the cur? He's the _Cajun Cholo._"

_"Will you ever quit being jealous of B's prickly phalli?"_

I wrinkled my nose and amused myself with distracting Madame Finesse by softly strokin' the stick-shift in my pants, because, what the hell? "Am I supposed to know the plural of phallus? I mean, _I _only got one johnson (though the myths and rumors and facts regarding my length and girth might make it seem otherwise), so that's all I need to know about. However, seein' as it's you, I'll humor you and get my people to look it up for you." I chuckled a bit remembering Bella's copper-top powered _phalli_ were safely hidden away, and her recent purchases still stuck in a warehouse. Pointing her gaze to my crotch, ABG figured, _"Let's see now, a four-and-a-quarter inch thumb, if I'm not mistaken. Multiplying that by three... would be... lessee, OH MY DEAR JESUS." _

Pretty fuckin' placated, I joked, but not really, "Hey, I got me a copper-top cock right here, and maybe once I prove my schlong is exponentially better'n anything a dilrod can do to her, I'll chill the fuck out. _Maybe_. Or, you know, when I get to use them on her myself." _Yeah that would be a win-win situation._ ABG nearly slid off the couch, most likely in a puddle of her own goo, with her hand in the air like she was motioning, "Oh! Pick me!" _I'd ride that disco stick even if it killed me, _were her most maleficent thoughts_._

It was all the AngryBadgerGirl could to read out Miss Ape's next question between gasps:

_"__Also, what is your take on Governor Sanford's wife filing for divorce a couple of days ago? I know how closely you have been following the political pig-n-boots. Here's the article I found: _

_**CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters**__) - The wife of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said on Friday that she was filing for divorce, six months after Sanford traveled secretly to Argentina for what he later confessed was an extramarital affair.  
_

_  
The two-term Republican governor, once considered a potential presidential candidate, lamented Jenny Sanford's decision to seek divorce and took responsibility for his "moral failure".  
_

_  
Jenny Sanford cited "many unsuccessful efforts at reconciliation" in a brief statement announcing her decision to seek the divorce.  
_

_  
On Wednesday, a South Carolina legislative subcommittee voted not to recommend the impeachment of Sanford, saying his secret trip in June for an affair with an Argentine woman did not meet the constitutional standard of "serious misconduct."  
_

_  
The matter goes before the full judiciary committee of the South Carolina House of Representatives for a vote next week.  
_

_  
The governor said his wife had been "more than gracious" over the past six months.  
_

_  
"While it is not the course I would have hoped for, or would choose, I want to take full responsibility for the moral failure that led to this tragic point," Sanford said in a statement."_

Because I really enjoyed a rousing, scathing rant about politicians, I found myself smiling right at the well-endowed, possibly-Aroused-Beautiful-Gamine's deep, sumptuous cleavage, fantasizing about one of my other favorite pastimes; a nice long soft tittyfuck. Catching my look, she whistled a caterwaul, and contemplated a shirt lifting maneuver akin to Girls Gone Wild. Badgers Gone Wild?

"What?" My reflection in the old RCA's boobtube grinned a bit goofily back at me, "You say something?" _Talk about boob tubes, had she lowered her top another half inch off her shoulders?_

"Baby, what's a girl gotta do to keep you focused? You need a lap dance?" _She was thinking to herself about Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils, and how that shit turned out for John the Baptist's head on a silver platter._I scrubbed my palms over my face and went back to the _other_ matter at hand, "Right, yeah, Ape's question. Well, I do consider myself quite the political pundit and those jackasses and elephants provide twenty-four-seven comedy. Guv Get's-his-dick-sucked-by-a-senorita Sanford supplied his fair share of levity in the double wide what with his tweets and all that shit. Fucker made as if he was up the Appalachian Trail, when really he was diving face first into an Argentinean minge. _Assmaggot_. All I can believe is he thought a bit too highly of Hoochie-hound-Clinton and thought he could get away with somethin' similar, since at least he wasn't doggin' an intern. Miss Jenny is a damn good-looking cougar, and she outta' just get her a toyboy. No need to put up with a dilly-dallying _dad_-like husband who imagines it's a-okay to get a little somethin' on the side. And as our jovial Congressman James Clyburn said to Jon Stewart, 'The Governor's pretty safe. He'll stay in office and just sort of meander around...and we'll get a new governor in November.' End of the Sanford Saga."

"Now, me? I'm a one-woman man-vamp-_whatthefuckever._ Don't be looking at me in disbelief. Even when I was fucking around, I never did more than one chick per night, which is saying a lot for horny creature who doesn't sleep. _My_ moral compass isn't that skewed."

Reclaiming her bottle of Merlot from my lap, ABG peered into its empty depths, placed it next to my sucked-dry collection of beer bottles, and reached into her tote for another vintage. I grinned, she shrugged. Damn if I didn't love a woman who could hold her liquor! With her glass replenished, she resituated herself amongst the musty cushions, showing a new helping of thigh, "This next question is from Jenn/winterstale. Jenn seems to have a "colorful" history with you, Eddie. Do you care to comment on that before I ask you her question?"

"Colorful don't even begin to explain it. That Miss Jenn is always smarting from something or other I've said, in passing -- I guess I failed to comment on a picture she posted on the Dead Thread once, or she was playing along with the other bawdy ladies and I bypassed her or some such. So, yessiree, we do share a slightly tense past. Anyway, she's all about Bubba, which is amusing because, _hello? _he's a fucking fucked-up, hypochondriacal, humongous vampire! She just makes it worse by picking out matching snuggies and sending him the latest Harlequin Romance trash. 'Sides, everyone knows I don't take well to sharing the limelight."

My sweet companion's thoughts rang clear, _"Aw, this young-old monster can be as scary as a lost little boy at the park. Shit, I dunno whether to fuck him or make him a cup of hot cocoa… made from raccoon blood, course." _Shoving aside her racy vision, she continued, "There, there, Eddie. You're the only vampy-man for me." _Come let Mama Badger show you... I shall comfort you in the very warm and cozy cleavage of my ample bazoom._ "Here's what Jenn wants to know:"

_"OK, Eddie. So you did the deed and like a gentleman, not in the back of a '77 Nova. Y'know, the orange one with the black stripes with "Tom Sawyer" blaring through a crackling, blown sub-woofer. *ahemcough* At any rate... I'm still curious about your behavior towards me. I'm still miffed over your treatment of darling dear Bubba. I'll be waiting... and watching. Oh yes, Eddie. You had the excuse of extreme sexual frustration. Now let's see how the rubber hits the road.  
.You. --Jenn"_

Madame so-Fucking-delicious came to my rescue, "Okaaaay... not even sure there was a question in there, but hey. This is an open forum. I'm an open book. I keep myself wide open. Yeah, yeah, yeah... spread 'em wide..._" _She stared at me almost savagely; _look at that wine bottle on his crotch! Shit, did his junk just jump? Hell, I'm not going to complain about a few bubbles in my refreshment if my look alone can get that reaction out of his gigantic glans. It's like I'm a fucking penis puppeteer. Could my life get any more awesome than this? I think not. _"Wait? What? Where were we?"

Completely enthralled, I leaned over AngryBadgerGirl, imagining her gash and grill bared below me, "No comment on that shit besides it just sucks ass, Jenn. Oh, and Miss F., you remember I can read your mind, right?"

She wasn't at all stupefied. "Eddie, do you think you're reading or hearing anything that wouldn't escape 'trippingly on the tongue' sooner or later? I love things on my tongue, sweet boy. You must've figured that out by now."I turned my dick like a pig on a spit, and she watched it all, "Moving on... here are some questions from the lovely and enchanting Viola Cornuta."

_Man, I know she's one of my betas and all, but must we? I just wanna sit out here under the stars--maybe we'll be lucky enough to see another Merde Meteor!--and suck the tannin staining my Awesome-Billowy-Gal's lips.  
_

_  
Shit, apparently we must.  
_

_  
"As your long-suffering beta back-up, I first want to know why you didn't send me a card to celebrate National Grammar Day on March 4th. You know I am tempted to leave your ungrateful ass adrift in thats'n shit. And you can whack yourself in the head with a rolled-up newspaper when you miss me. Or I can call up M'Esme, don't tempt me, boy, you know I have her personal cell number on speed dial."  
_

"Um, National Grammar Day? You're kidding right? I think you have me confused with your little pet, Pedanticward. I don't do Hallmark greetings," I declared. Now I was starting to get antsy, and I needed ABG to do me a slow strip tease, or head on over to Bella's house for some Tax Shack groping pretty damn quick.

_"More to the point, Eddie, you have been frank in your enjoyment of fanfiction, even though you won't offer up the authors and titles of your favorites. But I would like to know if you have read any of Rie's other work. If you have, what is your opinion of the other Edwards in Rie's universe? Yours to the end of the numbers, Vi."  
_

_  
Aw, pudwhacks and poontang. Now I felt bad for going off on Miss Vi. _"Sorry for my rudeness before... you know I ain't really like that. Exponential licks on your labia, Vibrarian ;). _Are you quiverin'?_ I love how I get a rise out of you so easily, though you ingest my..._thoughts_ with not one single gag reflex, it's all in the money-shot, right? I know I scare the pearls right off your saber tooth neck; however, I have nothing but respect for you. To your inquiry, s'not like I have a fucking choice, is it? Y'all email all day long, Rie writes all night, and then she pins me to the barely-held-together rocking chair and _reads_ her shit to me! Fuckin' hell. She's got her enough Sullen Cullens to populate the third world. Of her shit …let me see.

"Don't talk to me about _Sour, because..._ GAY FIC!

_"Surrender_ is powerful, and if I was into bungee surfin', I might-could get behind that Edward... but I ain't. Did like Bella's force and foul mouth in that one though.

"Rie's all up in arms and down in creationism and what-the-fuck-ever with _Youth Without Age_. S'okay, but Sit-in-the-corner-Cullen's kind of a toffy-pants. At least he jerks his junk..._ finally. _His mom's a multicultural, bohemian MILF though!

"Your pet-boy Pedanticward of _CK101_... meh. He makes me laugh, and I appreciate the way goes for what he wants, like deep-throating, ass-fucking and such, but he's a bit on the learned side, if you ask me.

"And _Incarcerated?_ Another damn gay fic! One that's up for the Indies no less. What The Hell? I didn't even win an Indie.

"Let's just say, I ain't all that happy about all the shit Rie writes... for damn sure she should be concentratin' on me alone. Vanessarae at least is dedicated to me – I quite enjoy it when she tells Rie of for her fanfic philandering."

Yawning and smiling at me sleepily, A+-Buffed-Grindage wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pushed her bare feet across my thighs, "Here are some more questions from your adoring fans, these cum--_she told me to say that_--from dazzledtina."

"Ha! Miss Ta-Da herself? Christ, I'm surprised she found the time; she's usually baring her ass for that fuckin' geeky, private school boy Daniel Gale. I sometimes tweet that motherfucker, Danni Boi, just so I can get him shakin' in the orthopedic-soled Clarks his momma bought him." I laughed and knocked back another, chasing it with a warmed-through-and-through blood packet. There was a scritchin' possum out front, blindly foraging along the trashy leavings of my next door assholes. I made note of him and how I was going to drink of his rodent-flesh later. "Fuck me, the last I heard from her she asked me if I wanted more pussy in the DW. What the mother-lover kind of rhetorical question was that? Apparently no amount of vagetarianism would appease me." But another gander at Miss F.'s sliding-up skirt and slipping-down blouse helped to soothe and incite me. "Lay it on me, baby."

_"Who has the bigger wang -- you or Carl?"  
_

_  
_"What?" I adjusted myself, patting my offended dick because such a thing didn't even need to be put to question. "In the sake of arrogance, and non-disclosure and all that cocksucking crap, _me... duh, _ta-da."

_"If you could live in any era, which would you choose and why?"_

"I guess the Roaring Twenties would have been fun, had I not been out on the razz like a dead-blooded vampire in my 'rebellious' period. Then again, and I know your Daniel Gale can appreciate this; women were way too fucking thin back then. More like plank boards than well-rounded, fleshy femmes."

I watched ABG settle her tits a bit and stroll her hands over her curvaceous hips. That's what I was talkin' about.

_"Have you ever built a snowman?"_

"Built me a snow pussy once. It was like a multi-layered, deep, dark cave that I could-"

ABG pounced on this shit like a rabid coyote, "Oh I need details on this, baby. A _snow pussy_? Not an actual feline, I presume? Did you... you know? You did not! Did you?" Blinking rapidly, she thought, '_Oh for shit's sake, no one could be horny enough to FUCK SNOW for the love of criminy. Could they?'_**  
**

**  
**I whispered against her ear, and enjoyed her trembling pout, "I'm just saying, I really think you'd have enjoyed watching me play with a _snow-pussy."  
_

_  
"Do you let Bella diddle your bunghole?"_

"That there's an exit only, or would be if there was anything to exit my body besides spunk. At least for now. Although I ain't averse to sexual exploration with Bella."

**  
**_"Have you ever participated in a sexual encounter with Carl, Bubba, or Jizzper--or all three at once?"  
_

_  
_My ain't-at-all-angry-gal followed up one of the final questions to my unformed thoughts, "Hells, yes, I would want to be in the room. I'd direct that shiz like Ron Jeremy setting up scenes in a cheesy 80's porno."

Yeah, she said that shit aloud.

"Holy hell! We got a sexual deviant on our hands? Threesomes, whoresomes would be fine, but too many cocks in the kitchen and it all just runs amuck, know what I'm sayin'? I reckon Paula Dean does." I finished my brew, massaged my delectable interviewer's fine ankle bones and finished up, "Three chicks and me? Maybe, might-could, we'd just have to see."

The mightiest manhandler on Earth sighed as her tired piggies melted into my cool, knowing hands. Her thoughts ranging to the wild side, _"__J__ust let those babies dance their way upstream, lover. Mama won't stop you."_

Oh, she was sidetracked by her one-track mind, but managed to exhale, "And here's one from eviekinz for you."

_"Eddie, you claim your 'anaconda' is quite large. Jonah Falcon boasts the world's record at 13.5 inches. How does that make you feel, knowing a mere mortal out-guns you?"_

Authoritatively-Bossy-Girl was shifting in her seat, and not from the happy trail my hands were sketching up her calves. Her open thoughts were thus, and I really didn't want to see them, _Jonah Falcon. That episode of the Daily Show. I was in the audience, third row, after waiting all day in the freezing rain. Just so happened a young British actor was the featured guest on said program that day. Merely a coincidence, mind you." _She uncrossed and re-crossed her lithe, lovely legs, making my wandering hands walk up above her knees with her conscious actions, _while fantasies of making bookends with Jon Stewart and the nameless British actor invaded her mind. Not talking wood shop, either. Just wood.  
_

_  
_Because I needed to know that?

I held back a chuckle as I watched her squirm uncomfortably. If there was one thing I knew about the Agonizingly-Blatant-Girl, it was she wouldn't be 'pooling in her panties' or trying to create friction. _Thank Beelzebub!_ "Eh, I got nothin' to say about Jonah Falcon and his Velociraptor Cock. If I'm unnatural, he's a damn mutant. And thirteen inches in your broad can't feel good. _My_ still top-secret inches are plentiful, perfectly-formed, and cause jaws to drop."

Not entirely recovered, but pretending to be, Miss Foundling Fetishist took up yet... one... more... question, "Our next reader question is from thenextGayleKing. Gayle's question is, um, interesting to say the least."

_  
"Have you and Bub ever lit your farts, and if so, who had the best one and why?  
Love, *Gayle*"  
_

_  
_I chortled a bit into the neck of my beer, handling it inside of my index and middle fingers, just as I would Bella's taut nipples, or the smooth, silky lips of her pussy when I wanted to tease her, "Gayle apparently knows no boundaries. _And that's another fucking Gayle to add to the fold._ Bumfuckery! Gayle, you live right down the goddamn road, we swap notes on Monster Truck Expos at the Charleston Coliseum. Bubba's like your own brother/father/uncle/nephew/kin. And you know well as I do that the farts are false, the ass stuff is total affectation, and the shits are a sham. So we don't fart...but our breath meeting an aerosol can and lighter? _Yeah, that is fucking better than Guy Fawkes fireworks!_"

_Entertaining thoughts of reclining atop a mass of satiny pillows whilst fanning Eddie with a giant ostrich feather and feeding him droplets of blood from a squeeze bottle, Miss Fortunate languished into the dirty DW couch. But when she could only picture Bella's face in that scenario, she let out a long, heavy sigh and muttered, rather grumpily, about youth being wasted on the young... and the immortal._

I stood and stretched. My beater and flannel rose above my stomach and my Levis fell down my hips. I offered my hand to Miss Freely Fingerable and raised her up to me. "We done, babe?"

**  
**Plum wore out, she let loose her dark hair, repositioned her sexy specs, and wholesomely smiled at me, "Yeah, sweet man, we're done."

**  
**I glanced at her knockers, her skin a luxurious shade of tawny, rich, and exotic. I wondered briefly if she knew how to belly dance, I could hear little silver chimes tinkling in her deep, serious, silly, sensual voice. Everyone seemed to know who and what I was; those that mattered at least. Her most of all. A Turkish Queen with lore of my kind coursing through her -- Vlad Dracul of Romania warding off her own ancient people. Ancestors of the beautiful lady before me had met their end, their heads on spikes, at the hands of the most infamous vampire in Eastern Europe.

_And still she felt comfortable with me._

Placing my hand to her cheek, running my thumb beneath her bottom lip, I looked down into those humane, intelligent, fierce, and funny-girl eyes, "Buxom-babe, AngryBadgerGirl, Miss F., you better skedaddle on home now."

Her cheeks flushed in a manner I was sure she was unused to, and her lips tilted up, "It was a pleasure, Eddie. I hope we can do it again sometime. But in the meanwhile, you be a passionately protective, preternatural pasha to your capriciously contrary, cutie concubine."

_Well, Jesus, she had my number.  
_

_  
_I turned her slim, working woman's hand in mine, and pressed as soft a kiss as was possible into the hills of her palm.

Jizzper pulled up in his sleek, black, classic Ford pickup. Not-quite-Angelic-Alice hefted Miss Firm Free-Range Fanny's carryon into the cab. I helped her off the porch, holding her hand, winking at her. When I had her stowed away, I rapped my knuckle on the top and nodded goodbye.

True to form, Bubba came out of nowhere and jumped into the truckbed, heehawing and mooning me like the buffoon he was!

Rose took up the rear in her fire engine red El Camino, honking all the way down the rabbly drive, while I gave one last look at AngryBadgerGirl, waving from the open window, her face turned back to me with the biggest shit-eating grin.

Oh, there'd be stories to tell about that journey in days to come.

But for now, I needed Bella. For all my bluster and tomfoolery, I belonged to her alone.

I made for my Bronco and spun out on the soft-shoulder. _I couldn't wait to see her._

_

* * *

  
_

~ I hope you enjoyed the fruits of Eddie's loins and ABG's labors – give it up to them!~

I want to thank you, AngryBadgerGirl, for taking Eddie in _hand_ and for letting us monopolize your time. Let me tell y'all, if you think her stories like _Frenemies_ and _The Naked Guy Upstairs_ are fuckawesome, well, the woman behind those fics is beyond description. She's generous to a fault, witty as hell (obvs) and just damn brilliant.

**Two things, ff took out out one of Eddie's endlessly long cursing bouts -- I've tried to add it back in. And, I forgot, _sorry_, but thank you to all the lovely ladies who sent in questions; I hope you got a chuckle out of Eddie's answers!**

Hey, my _Incarcerated_ is up for two Twific Indies awards (much to Eddie's chagrin) – go and vote, starting March 15th!

Put me on alert – there's something new a fabulous friend I wrote that's coming next week.

YwA shortly after.

Rie: And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Eddie: *cocks an eye at his... well, _his cock_, of course*

Rie: No, not that, Eddie. _Although_, I suppose Bella's gotten enough sleep by now...

Cheers, Rie~


	19. Suck, Bang, Blowout

Rie: Right, so where were we?

Eddie: *raises his delicious eyebrow*

Rie: OH! Of course… _dare I say it?_ You made love to Bella!

Eddie: *raises the other eyebrow and palms his crotch*

Rie: *squeaks* A LOT!

Eddie: Yeah, now, you got something to say to my readers?

Rie: Alright already. It's cool. Hey, fucktastic readers, reviewers, alerters, lurkers… Eddie ain't goin' nowhere! If it takes some time between chapters, y'all just have to forgive me. I kinda want to write Rebelward forever! I mean, seriously, do y'all ever want to have to say goodbye to him? _Didn't think so._

Eddie: *nods emphatically, his bobble-cock does too*

Rie: Just rest assured our man-vamp-_whatever_ has ten tons of sexy, sultry, southern sweetness yet to come.

Eddie: Got that right. These women know I've got stamina, _staying power,_ the likes of which they've never seen.

Rie: Preaching to the choir, darlin'. Final word: if you're waiting for this to be complete before you review or read, please don't. Eddie _really_ wants to hear from you.

To my two beautiful, bodacious, talented betas – Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta much crazy love and gratitude! Y'all put up with a lot (I'm totes blaming that on Eddie) and we'd be a mess without you (and they still let me make up words!).

Ta to the babes who own me and the Double Wide, you know who you are. Big smooches to AngryBadgerGirl, Vanessarae, Viola Cornuta and winterstale for general awesomeness and shout-outs.

Disclaimer: Well, no, I do not own Twilight, etc. I own a Southern bad boy vamp, his crazy clan, and a trailer in the Luxury Hollows Trailer Vista.

* * *

**Suck, Bang, Blowout**

Bella stretched and rolled, sighed, lightly snored, and even drooled on my chest, dampening the scattering of hair there…and it was all so fucking…_cute._

As if she sensed her sloppiness sliding over me in her sleep, she drowsily stroked my pecs and kind of slipped-kissed her way up to the ropey muscles of my neck. And it was all so fucking _excruciatingly_ arousing.

In her goddamn dozing she crawled her way on top of me until I was covered in a Bella-smelling, soft-as-satin blanket. Tittie pillows flattened on my torso, the heat from her pussy soldered to my dick, my 'nads were so close to bursting with no stimulation, just from her fucking sexy, _sleeping_, proximity.

It was sultry; we smelled of delicious sex.

I cooled her with my hands up and down her back, lightly of course, though those fuckers had a mind of their own and spent most of their time cupping her friggin' mouth-watering ass.

At one point, she undulated like a serpent on dunes over me. I bit so hard on my lip, willed my dick to shut the fuck up with its cry, _'She wants it, give it to her, let me in, let's fuck her now!'_, and arched my neck instead of my hips, ripped into the messy sheets instead of sinking into her delightfully tight channel.

After that, Bella was so fucking out of it, she didn't move a muscle for four… hours… straight. In fact, the only thing that twitched was my boner. Often.

Easing out from under her just as the grating grebes, the startled awake starlings, the motherfuckin' loud mockingbirds started their pre-sunrise nattering, I figured I'd better get something a bit more satisfying to eat especially as I didn't want to leave Bella's pussy unattended for the next couple of days.

Standing at the bar's sink in the sitting room, I rushed through a redneck bath – pits, cock, balls, face.

My cock and balls wanted more attention, but I wasn't about to yank it now I finally had Miss Bella in my bed.

In the wakening forest leading to Beachwalker County Park, I stealthily demolished a family of bobcats and three white-tailed deer while eagles, osprey, and turkey vultures circled overhead, oscillating specks against the pastel morning sky. _Jealous of my kills and predatory instincts, no doubt_. Owls that were settling to sleep screeched at me, like I wanted their fuckin' mice anyhow. I nodded to the cunts, threateningly, and that shut 'em up.

You bet you fucking greenbacks Team DNR wasn't welcome in these here parts. Kiawah Island Natural Habitat Conservancy was all about protecting the wildlife population. For what? So the upperclass, middle-aged, Amex-wielding wankers of this top-notch, poncey-protected atoll of affluent assholes could wave their golf clubs at the alligators encroaching the eighteenth hole?

I buried the carcasses after throwing out a fair share of meat to the carrion-lovin' buzzards and birds of prey; I didn't want to alarm the goody-two-shoes, do-gooder conservators.

Yeah, I unapologetically made a healthy dent in the protected fauna. Even snagged me a juvenile gator–as ever, that was some good drinkin' of a cold-blooded reptile. I coulda' been sorry, but hell, man-vampire-_whatever_ couldn't survive on pussy alone. Trust. I'd tried and tested that theory through the night, and Bella's pretty, pink pussy was testament to that.

She'd already had a room service breakfast by the time I got back and whatever it was smelled rank… glotty eggs or something, by the stench of it. No matter, I was certain I could get the sex-pheromones worked up quickly to mask the foul food's skank-ass scent.

She was also dressed, and I wasn't having that. I started shedding my clothes as soon as the door swung back on its automatic hinge. Reaching around lightning fast, I hooked the _Do Not Disturb_ sign on the knob, and finished releasing my… _knob._ Bella relinquished the monogrammed linen napkin, relished the sight of my cock, my chest, my salacious smile. Wide and brown like the doe I'd just snacked on, Bella's eyes rapidly swifted to lust-ridden darkness.

"Clothes off, now," I demanded, pacing closer, naked as a fuckin' blue jay.

Standing, pushing the winged chair back with her legs, Bella eyed me up starvingly, startlingly sensual and teasing me, "Why? You still hungry?" She leaned her head to the side so her clean, shiny hair brushed a shoulder bared from the loose neck of her oh-so-old t-shirt. Even baggy, the top couldn't hide the color and stiffness of her nipples, proud and wanton.

I drew in a ragged breath and pushed my fingertips all along her neck, the _pump-pump-pump_ of life and blood and lo-… _life_ thrilling me.

"_Yeah,_ damn near addled with wanting to sink my lips to your slit," My smirk hardened when I skirted my palms down her chest, shredding the shirt as I went. "Now, skirt off, unless you want me to destroy that, too."

She gestured me away and bent from her waist, breasts hanging low, nipples like dancing pendulums. _Strike-strike-strike_, they swayed. I held my open hands, flat, just below the juts so they scraped across my palms tenderly.

_Fucking Jesus Christ!_

Skirt gone, no panties, _A-motherfuckin'-men!, _Bella rose and joked through surges of breath, her hands following her eyes all up and down me, "Hell, Eddie, you weren't kidding about being ready." She stroked my cock in one fist, squeezing, fingering the ring right under my head until I started shaking, and I had to grab her hair and perfect friggin' waspish waist before I fell over. "What'd you do? Take Cialis?" _Aw, fuck, she been talkin' to Paw?_

Even while she clapped a hand to my ass, pulling me closer, I felt her muttering against my lips, _"Erectile dysfunction, malfunctioning man, virile vampire…"_

I pulled away from the breath of her kitten-kiss, "This ain't dysfunction, love." I worked my dick in and out of her cylindrical hold, "My cock is _highly _functioning, just like the rest of me. You just ain't used to a real man."

I leaned to lay on a nice, deep, saucy French kiss and she laughed in front of our lips' greedy pull, "_You mean vampire."_

Enough of this anathema, I needed the panacea of her pussy. Right. Fucking. Now.

I grasped her plump derriere, raided and ransacked her mouth, took her feet out from under her and sat her right down in the chair she'd almost overturned a couple minutes ago.

It seemed not being able to read her mind was a good thing, because now my shaft was bobbing straight in her face and I wasn't the only one still hungry.

Pointing her tongue from frenulum to tip, over and over and over again, Bella gripped me hard at the base of my dick, tangling in my sex-hair and twisting to stave off any wayward ejaculation.

I wound long, luscious lengths of her hair around one forearm, like a rein, and held on for dear fuckin' life, grunting, "Bella! You're killing me."

She released my wet length, ran her hands up and down, spreading her juices until I was good and sodden all over, and looked up at me with all the carnal capriciousness she possessed**, **"You're already dead, babe."

With that she sucked me, kissed and licked me, murmured and _'Mmmm'd'_ all over my cock.

Twining her tongue around me, like viney jasmine, she took me to the back of her throat and just beyond where the ring of her muscle tightened around the tip of my dick. Shaking legs made it an effort to remain upright. My sinews strained, my thighs were mighty, my tendons stretched, my nuts like bolts, my stomach stitched in and out as each muscle clenched with every tickle and tonguing motion.

My groin pounded closer and closer to her fuck-goddess lips.

"_FUCK!_ Bella, I'm going to fall over."

A slither off my shaft and she turned us so I was propelled down to the chair, "Then you best sit down, Eddie."

Her grin was so out-of-this-world ardent, knowing. Her lips engorged from tasting me.

She laughed and lipped up the gem of venom sliding across the top of my cock.

Holy hell in a handbasket, _or something more manly_, did Bella have the opposite of lockjaw or something? Fuckin' sure felt like it because immediately her mouth was wide open so I felt all of her heat but little of her touch, which was a freaky feat because I had me some girth. Pure phallic persecution**.**

I jerked my hips up and moaned.

I think I even begged for her to wrap her lips around me, trap my cock in her mouth, and make me cum.

I grabbed the ledge of the drop-leaf side table and broke it off.

I smoothed her shoulders, her chin, her lowered eyelashes, and skipped my fingers across her freckled nose until, finally, she laved me with renewed lustiness.

Then I just fell back, raised my hips, and felt.

_Nothing, fucking mother-lovin' nothin' had ever felt this good!_

Mindless, I heard slurps and moans. Her thumbs dented into my muscles, as much as they'd give.

She rolled my balls like dice at a craps table.

She smiled all over me.

_So fucking full of life!_

It was the glint in her eyes; pride, pleasure, fun, that did my nut in. A cup of my balls, a tangle in my nest of hair, a tug of my dick and a slick suction right at the swollen-bright head, over and over, a slice of her teeth against first one and then the other of the blue-raised rivulet veins of my lower abdomen, and I exploded like Mount Saint Helens!

I wondered, abstractly, if woman could survive on poison-spunk alone.

Still breathless and groaning, I managed a laugh because Bella looked like a nut-filled chipmunk, her cheeks convex with my seed. I stroked her throat and aided my own brand of jack down into her belly, our looks mingling, our eyes alight.

Backhanding her mouth, Bella gave a final swallow and doubled over in laughter.

_Again, not exactly the reaction I was looking for, but better than three Hail Marys and the sign of the cross and a spritz of Holy Water, I supposed._

Sitting back on her heels, her legs spread, her hands on my thighs, she spoke, "Sorry, baby, that was a lot! I don't think I'll need to eat for a week."

_Okay, I guess that answered my question._

I stood and swept Bella up in my arms. My dick hit her butt all the way to our bedroom.

Arranging her on the bed, I halted to watch her writhe. _Beautiful._ The springy mattress caved beneath me as I made my way over her. Her wrists inside my fists were clapped down to the duvet above her head. Her hair, curling and moist from her shower, was of Medusa…a bowery of reptiles.

She moved curvilinearly, her tits toppled and bounced.

I leaned low to lick. Bite.

Her back bowed, her hips rounded up, and kept circling, searching, insatiable.

My fat, long, heavy cock slapped against her thigh. She jostled closer and jested, "Damn, baby, that really _is_ some turn-around time." I spread her knees, curled her fingers around the edge of the eiderdown, and lapped from her cleavage to navel. Tickling her with my pursed lips at her nadir, just above her clit, I moved my lips from one hip to the other and she sighed deliriously, "You sure you don't take Viagra?"

I laid my cheek on her tum and drummed her clit with my thumb, "This beef is free-range, all organic, all natural–least as natural as a vampire gets. Wanna' test it for hormones?" I quirked an eyebrow, Bella cocked a hip, and I was inside the succulent petite home her hasty helixes made about me.

Blissfully begging me to shut my gob, Bella's fingers stoked my mouth; she was all musk, messed up with me inside her, "Don't talk to me about your free-range ways, baby." Her hands joined in my hair, her mouth drove against mine and she whispered, "You're mine now."

Pulling her up to me, I snuck to her neck, her ear, her lips.

It was slow, this fucking.

I could go on for-fuckin'-ever.

Keeping my pace, at the edge of the bedstead, pushing it steadily closer to the loge opened to the spring's humidity, I just loved being inside of her and watching her swoon backwards, elegantly, decadently.

"_Ah, Oh my… God-Eddie!" _Oh, that was an improvement, sort of.

There was sweat, the renewal of our sex, and wetness spreading all over.

I couldn't stop.

I came once, Bella twice with sharp twists and jerks into me.

I continued to rub her nub against me, agitating her.

At one point, she nabbed her lower lip from beneath my suckling deep kiss and tore a crimson path across that bow.

Pouting, she held it out to me.

I ceased all movement. Steadied myself, readied, and licked the ribbon of claret love leaking from her.

Bringing her closer by my biceps, I groaned and closed her cut and stayed my gyrating cock.

It leapt and shook inside Bella's crevasse.

I fingered her ass, the cleft and hills and her hands-full of hips.

_I'd controlled myself._

There was a radish red sex rash raping Bella's chest and blooming across her tits.

Looking down to where we were joined -- _slick, wet, cold, hot, hard, soft, suck, thrust_ – I decreed, "I don't think I can stop."

I hadn't been inside a woman since some debutante named Cacky. And that was a weird mishap. Khaki was a color, for fuck's sake, not a name! The savage Old Village wedding planner kept stopping to repair seams on her shirt, and scrapes to her knees – while I'd fucked her from behind, she on her knees on a rough Palmetto rug – with the first-aid kit she kept tucked in her cleavage or some such shit.

_Village idiot._

The coarseness of my touch, my chest and legs and thighs and arms to her suppleness, malleability, and womanly strength, I kept going inside Bella. My cock steadily growing. My voice rumbling, growling.

"Oh!" Bella exclaimed.

"How's about I just lay you down? Can I stay inside you?" I was such a selfish bastard, and I didn't give a fuck, I just needed to keep my cock in her. Fuck me; she could sleep with it like a pacifier to her twat. I didn't care.

Her quim quivered around my dick in currents and replenished arousal.

"Yes."

_Oh Jesus!_

I tried not to move. I watched her breathing slow as the pulse in my dick ramped up.

Her cheeks relaxed. Her body became a stole around me.

_I smiled._

This was somethin' fuckin' else.

Forty minutes later, she roused. I hadn't budged. "You're still inside." She snuggled closer, pulled the padded, frigid muscles over my ribs, ran her hands backwards over my ass and lower to where my cock nestled inside her.

"Hmmm," I shifted my hips. Our bodies dovetailed. Our arrangement effortless and near silent and slow and lovely and… _wondrous._

Turning, making sure not to rip my dick from my groin, she gripped me with her legs and her flesh, "Know what I like?"

"Tell me." I wanted to know.

"You're cold yet soft." _SOFT?_ I balked, winced. She laughed, "Not like that, Eddie."

_No, not like that. _My hardness sidled against her again, as if to make sure.

"Hard," she lunged, taking me deeper. "Filling," Bella twisted her entire body. A dragon woman, she dragged me under until I had her tossing around the bed like one, singular, white wave of depraved senses!

We burned.

Joined, arched, held hands, sawed, _seesawed,_ the seaweed of her hair snagged and snarled and caught just like our voices in shouts undecipherable.

A crash!

Collision.

_Away._ Together. Tighter than ever.

Even I wanted a snooze after that.

If this was what I gained after a catnap, I was all for forty winks.

_~~ll~~_

Later, because we were at a premier seaside resort, Bella insisted we spend a few hours on the beach instead of behind closed doors. I only relented because Bella in a bathing suit wasn't something I'd turn my nose up at – _maybe my cock, but not my nose._

I wandered around naked a bit, pretending to look for my trunks, just to see if I could get another blow job out of her but she was intent on stuffing a bag with magazines, towels, and bottles of water.

She changed in the bathroom and came out in some sort of terrycloth romper that hugged her ass like my hands were dying to do. Bare-chested, I had on a pair of board shorts that sat so low on my lean hips the carving of my lower abs and a healthy dose of my pleasure trail was apparent.

Bella almost dropped her tote and sagged against the back of the chaise longue.

_Might get some head after all!_

Or not. Blushing and looking away from me, Bella grabbed the keycard and we made our way down the boardwalk to the oceanside. Heat blasted off the sand and crashing waves like the very pits of Hell–and by the looks of the fat, foreign fuckers in their Speedos with their tiny chicken nuggets packed inside under a few rolls of paunch, this was definitely one circle of Purgatory.

Those obese bastards were accompanied by leather-fleshed females with saggy, cottage cheese asses and dimply bosoms. My boner beat a hasty retreat.

Shoving the beach umbrella so far down in the sand even Hurricane Hugo or his lesser known bro Tropical Storm Gaston would be hard put to blast the bastard out of the dunes, I dusted off my hands and winked at my giggling girlfriend. "You know, with skills like that, you could probably get a job here," she laughed.

And then she took that jumper-thingy off and I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and focused on the fat cunts again, "You know, in a bathing suit like that, I think the only job I want, _right now, _is a hand job, Bella." I knew I was glowering, but what the FUCK was that… _thing_ she had on? Yeah, I'd wanted to see Bella in a bikini, but that was… _what was that?_ Flustered, I flapped my hands at her, and stared more, glared at her ample tits, and then grinned and looked for about another two minutes, give or take.

Ignoring my reaction, as if she couldn't see the massive erection I was suddenly sporting, she coiled her hair into some kind of frothy confection on top of her head and merely smiled at me. With a groan, I restrained myself just enough to skim along the scant, melted-buttercup-yellow–_because it had to be yellow, right? Just like the dress my dick still dreamed about–_material that dipped between her tits, pretty much baring everything but her nipples. I ate up the panorama of the sweet sides of her bust and stuck a finger on the downside of her tits, feathering the secret little hold of flesh there. And fuckin' malignant Mother of God, those bottoms? Gaddamn handkerchiefs. Triangular bits of fabric tied together – _TIED for fuck's sake –_ over her rounded hips. "Shit, Bella, did they run out of material or something when they made that… that… _fuck."_

I hung my head and shuffled my feet, stepping closer so my chest met her tits, and she smiled, "It's called a bikini, Eddie."

She ran her hands up and down my arms then hugged me loosely, kissing my Adam's apple. _Were we done with this beach thing yet?_

Apparently not. Bella bent over–_not a wise move with my cock so close to the teeny fuckin' bikini_–and began rummaging through her bag, coming up victoriously with a tube of–_let it be lube, let it be lube, my lewd inner-beast cajoled–_sunscreen.

Sunscreen would work if it meant I could get my hands on her.

She poured the tropical-smelling white stuff into my hand and turned away so I could slather her with the protectant. I made sure to give her a good massage she wouldn't forget, paying special attention to the swell of her hips, the indent of her waist, the perfect divots above her bottom. Down her frontside, I played with her tits a bit more than was prudent in public, and dragged my fingers along her inner thighs, watching her eyes droop the closer I got to her pussy. Heightening her desire, I finished by lightly brushing the backs of my fingers around her covered slit.

She recovered slowly, like the way she woke from sleep, rolling her hips, her shoulders back so her tits were further pronounced, and raising her arms above her head, which made another direct invitation to her mounds.

"Your turn," she grabbed the tube and beckoned me to the blanket.

Scratching along my sideburns I explained, "You know I don't really need that shit, right?"

"Don't matter, baby. It's the only way I can touch you, _decently_, in front of all these people."

_Ding Dong!_

She worked up and down my back first, pressing right down below the waistband of my shorts until I moaned and my body was motioning her lower, down my ass and to my balls.

Her lips at my ear commanded, "Roll over, Eddie."

Fuck, she musta' known about my dick's Pavlov dog trick, because it jerked at the summons and sighed heavily against my crotch.

Straddling me, leaning over, she practically smothered me with her tits but I didn't need to breathe and anyway, I'd happily suffocate inside her cleavage even if I did, so I wasn't complaining.

I 'bout pulled the thick canvas umbrella down over us when she pressed her fingers into my abs, tracing the slice of each muscle. Moaning, I kissed the insides of her breasts and silently pleaded with her to just jerk me off right quick.

Instead, Bella leapt of me and declared, "Done! Let's go for a walk."

We swept our feet through the silty sand, turned over slimy, green-frilled leaves of seaweed, holding hands. Beachcombing, shell collecting. _What the fuck?_ The only nautilus I wanted to see was tucked away inside that bikini designed by the devil himself. And that wasn't happening because Bella kept slapping away my badly-behaved hands. If those appendages were rebellious, my dick was downright delinquent; my prick needing to perpetrate public indecency in the worst way.

Kids hollered and raced after sandpipers and scavenging gulls, fowl that was much too small to interest me; _the kids and birds both_. The Atlantic tried to catch us in its warm foam, and once I threw Bella down to a tepid tidal pool, flicking away hermit crabs so I could suck her nipples underwater for a couple minutes.

Though I felt just agreeably warmed, Bella was hot. She decided to go for a swim. I eschewed the water to watch her beachside. I barely saw her slim, sexy body cut like a knife into the water before mingy sand mites started trying to take nips from me. _Right._ I swear, the mangy, flea-ridden pelicans with their big jaws like impersonators of Dickhead-Cheney were in collusion with the mouthy seagulls to keep near-nekkid Bella from my sights.

_Fuck this._

I stood, and ignored the voyeuristic imaginings aimed my way by the gathered flock of gelatinous-fleshed strumpets nearby. I'd just have to take a dip myself. Lucifer knew I wanted a dip. Not of snuff and not in the water, most definitely in something hotter, but I'd take what I could get.

A few grumpy kids hid behind their mommas when I scowled at their architecturally unsound sandcastles. Then there was a Mensa-wannabe with the turrets so precisely placed about the garrison it was like she was channeling that shit straight from the Volturi's hold-out in Italy. I winked at her, tipped my head to her mom, and made sure to raise up some draughts of water to the sociopathic, shitheaded ten-year-olds bent on toppling her fortress. An underhanded snarl made sure the cunty little creeps left her alone in her construction.

Salty water licked up my calves, to my thighs, to my dick… to Bella. She was alternately body-surfing and floating on her back and both actions had me worried for the state of her tits in the diaphanously negligible top. I held her up with a hand on the keys of her spine and leant over to kiss the crusting salt from her lips.

Thank ye cunts the manatees didn't make it up this far north because I couldn't do with another heifer flipping me off like the seaworthy cow in the Glades. Dolphins turned right off as soon as they smelled me. _Good._ Same goes for you too, sharks. That's right, I thought, top of the food chain here so keep your distance. _Fuckin' dare ya' to bite me, I'll break your jaw for you._ I snapped my teeth at a school of fish and brought Bella up around my waist.

"I'm starting to prune, Eddie," she mentioned, and wrinkles on her rich flesh would just be wrong so I dropped her to her feet and towed her from the depths. Turning around, I knew my mistake instantly.

Slinky Bella in that kinky, minuscule, wet bikini was damn near pornographic; she was glorious! Botticelli, gore your eyes out. My mouth was dry, my eyes hard-wired to her tits that looked about ready to topple out of the now-sheer, stingy top, not to mention her pointed nipples that were just _begging_ to be sucked. My voice was goddamn _squeaky_ when I asked, "Love, you want a towel?" _Or my dick, or my body, or for me to beat some of these filthy fuckin' beachgoers up?_

"Nah, I'll just dry off in the sun." Yup, that was my girl. Au naturel and way too fuckin' sexy for her own good.

I wanted to wet-dock my cock in her canal.

She lay down, relaxed, basking in the sun like an anole. Covered in the swept-up glitter of flinty sand, Bella sparkled under the rays. And just like she had at that fateful Strawberry Festival, she took on the shimmery image of one of my own. I paid homage to my woman by giving the stink-eye-snarl combination to any shyster who even glanced at her. The number of skank-asses leaving snail trails of lust over her trebled when she untied the back of her belittling bikini top. _Wait. What? Was this a nudie beach?_ I looked around and the answer was 'Hell No'.

"You want your cover-up, love?" _Yes, please say yes._

"No," her muffled voice answered, "I'm fine."

_That you are_, I nodded as did my bobble-cock and about ten men and twenty birds.

I sat up, shifted, unable to get comfortable. I needed either a fuck or a feast and Captain D's wasn't going to cut it.

Just the brilliant brown of one eye over one arm looked at me, her lips curved, "Sit still, baby. You got ADHD or something?"

I smeared piles of sand and motes in between, comparing my shitty compilation to the parapets that little girl had made earlier, "No."

_I could still if I wanted to, right? I'd done it last night when I really, really, wanted to just fuck her a few more times._

"My dick's hard as a stalagmite, and it's uncomfortable. You're not helping with your top half-off," oh Christ, was I whining about my throbbing boner? Was I pouting? I just wanted to pound her, redistribute the eroding sand around her body while I -

Bella caressed my knee and halted my rant, "Poor thing, you want something soft and snug to sink into? Something wet and tight?"

_Yeah._ I made fast time packing our shit up and piggy-backing her back up to the hotel.

_Soft, snug, sensual solace._

_~~ll~~_

We sat Indian-style on the bed that had seen a few more romps, as had the desk chair, the double-wide, claw-footed tub… _as well as the bar and the smoked-glass coffee table in the parlor. _I'd had to be extra cautious on that brittle, slippery surface, but watching Bella ride me while our skin slid across the glass was well worth it.

Now I was in my boxer-briefs and Bella wore one of my t-shirts. She pressed her nose to the ribbed collar and breathed deeply, "Maw still doing your laundry?"

I reclined back, "Yeah, unless you're offering?"

Out of nowhere, Bella belted me with a huge feather pillow! And I just boomed with laughter. She made me foolish. I hadn't felt this way since… _I hadn't felt this way ever._

Shaking my head, I reached over and brought our hands together, freely.

My libertine woman asked, "What?"

I sat tall and pulled away.

There was so much to tell, to make her know… _I was going to Hell._

"We have to talk."

"You talk a lot, baby. You don't often tell me what I need to know though," levity left the room with her crisp counter.

Stroking her thighs, I tried to remember, _Bella was here because she wanted to be. She understood at least half the truths, and she still wanted me._

I nursed a near-empty beer and made a go of showing her the ghost I was.

"It's not just us."

Her brow furrowed, she plucked out the cotton from her hips – _I couldn't help myself. If I just leaned over and looked down I would be face-to-face with her lovely landing strip._

Cross-legged, aching, and wanting her to be alright with all this bullshit, I started, "There's royalty."

Bella pounded the bed, her hilarity would soon be histrionic, I knew it. "Queen of the Damned and all that?"

There were pleading creases all over my face; she needed the facts, "Not a queen. A blackguard king." It stripped me bare to say his name, like mentioning the Sandman, "Aro. He murdered his half-sister, Didyme, because she loved another."

She sat up rigidly, "That's a bit incestuous, isn't it? Good to know it's not just a hillbilly institution." Then she became as straight as that beach umbrella pole I'd shoved down to the Earth's mantle, "He's not a Southerner too, is he?"

The laugh I gave was harsh, "No, love. They're Italian."

"They?"

I felt like I needed to wipe perspiration from my brow, but there weren't any fuckin' secretions, just the tingle of terror that Bella was going to leave me after another bizarre helping of truth, "Yeah, three of them, a triumvirate of tyranny: Aro, Marcus, Caius. Our man Marcus was in love with Didyme, her allegiance to the lesser vampire frightened the lily-livered, parchment-faced fuck. So mad-hatter Aro murdered her one night when they were out doing their Nazi thing – ridding the countryside of rogue vampires. Extermination, genocide… if you didn't play by the Volturi's rules to keep the bloodsucking secret society hush-hush, they'd fucking have your head. Auto de fé that ended in dismemberment, and embalming by fire."

"Their names are a bit contrived, aren't they?" She was grasping at straws, trying not to see that this thing I was, this _cretinous_ creature was just as capable of horror as those three brothers.

Chuckling, I joked, "I usually just call them The Brothers Grimm. Or, you know, Asshole, Mingus, and Cuntus. But their names are in keeping with their creation. It's said they were not turned, not like the rest of us, but born to this un-life, in 1000 BC."

Bella gasped and rolled the limp, sex-smelling sheet into a ball at her feet, "Jesus, and I thought you were old!"

"Unrivaled, unbreakable, untouchable, ancient. Like most of our breed, they're people eaters." Her eyes flitted to mine in shock and disgust. _Good._ Her nose wrinkled, her lips curled. "I've had human blood too."

She nodded and shrank away from me, only a smidgen, before she realized what she was doing and came back to touch my fingertips with hers, marveling at this gory beast, this horny man, this undying vampire in front of her.

"And all this matters because…?"

"You've been made out to be my death, in their tomes, or my deliverance _to them._ The trio of twats have always wanted to get their sallow talons in me; see, I can read minds pretty much effortlessly and from a distance. Aro has the same gift, but he must be touching the person whose mind he's raping. They pride themselves on their collections: art, architecture, kingdoms, _people, _talented vampires like me, like Alice," Bella reached for my beer and finished it off with a thirsty glug, I reached over to the cooler and brought out two more.

"I'm the one that got away. The canary to the cat."

"_Ha ha ha_, Tweety to Sylvester?" Bella choked on a mouthful of brew.

"Something like, yeah," I grinned at my woman, who never failed to surprise me. "From what we can find out from Malcontent Malice, you're prophesied to be my like kind, kindling to my ashes. It's why I tried so fucking hard to stay away from you, love."

Swallowing down more PBR, just the way she'd swigged my cum earlier, she looked vital, avid for more information which I gave against my will; "They'll want you too."

"What do you mean, they'll want me? _Why?_ I'm no more than a senior in high school whose boyfriend is one of the cool kids," innocence winged across her features, nesting into a frown.

Fading more and more pale, Bella tented my 't' down around her legs that she'd brought up close to her body, her chin resting on her knees and her arms caging her like a bear trap. She stretched the hell right out of my shirt, and this was the first time I wasn't _tenting_ my briefs at the vision of her in my clothing, knowing I wouldn't throw the gray short-sleeves into my laundry bag come warshing day at Maw's. I thought I should maybe get her a giant tumbler of sweet tea topped off with ten tablespoons of sugar to amp up her hummingbird heart again, but all I did was stroke her cheek with the back of hand, trying to bring her color back.

"First, they'd change you."

"Whoa. Hold up! Make me one of you?" she jabbed a finger at me and damn near gave me 'the hand'.

"Yes."

"So they're really out to get you, and they'd use me as a pawn," she wondered.

"There's Alice as well," I muttered.

Bella rolled her eyes, took a drink, and kidded, "She's a bit of a crazy bat, huh."

I adjusted myself, and not very subtly. Bella's flush was back and the shirt was skirting up her knees–_if she just widened her legs a touch more, the succulent sight of her muff would soothe my gruffness that littlest bit._ "Crazy _old_ battleaxe, more like."

"So you're all really dead and old as-"

"Dirt," I finished for her.

Nodding, she asked, "What about Rose and Bubba? Jazz?"

"Old-timey, ashes, and even _older."_

"Carl?"

"Reborn in the 1640's."

"So, a medieval, middle-aged-wannabe vampire," she snorted and ran patterns into the quilt with her bare feet.

"Maw's actually younger than me, this go 'round," I supplied.

"Okay, now that _is_ kinda' creepy," Bella laughed.

"But Alice, the Undead Druid, she knows things. And it ain't just random. She can see you and me. Aside from that, the Volturi want her as well–our powers are twinned. If we opened up to each other, we might-could become unstoppable."

Bella's ballerina-beautiful arched feet stopped moving, "She's running too."

"Yeah."

"Queero woulddo anything to have me, and you, my girlfriend," I paused to tap the fullness of her mouth, to smile sadly, "the only person whose mind I cannot read, a woman I want to protect,"–_I left out the obvious fact she was the chick I wanted to fuck from dusk 'till dawn and all the hours in between, because that was a given_, "you, Bella, would be used as a weapon against me."

She huddled deeper into my shirt and clung to her knees like a drowning person to a lifeboat, "The shield that's your mind is a snare against me. You'd probably go right to the top of the Most Wanted List if they found out about you, _and me_." I chuckled with no feeling of flippancy, "Some fucker's got a sick sense of humor, to make you my singer, my woman, _and the only one whose thoughts are barricaded against me._ It's fucking perfect. Aro couldn't have planned it better himself!"

Her voice bled with sobriety, "Because I'm going to be your -"

I wanted to say something flowery, pretty, poetic. Something tender to express the kernel of liveliness she'd planted inside of me, but I couldn't because any mention of the interred Italians scared the ever-lovin' shit out of me, especially now.

"Killer."

She shook her head and shots of sun made it halo-like, she grabbed my shoulders and leapt into my lap and clasped my cheeks, "Don't you say that, Eddie. No matter what happens, _don't you ever say that._"

Abusing my neck with kisses and fingerling brushes, she wanted more and more and more, "You said you're the one that got away."

Brushing her hair between my fingers, appealing to the tip of her ear, I did not want to go _here._ "_Chelsea._"

"A woman," the flatness of her tone was precise.

"One of their henchwomen. Yes." I pushed into the upper hills of her ass and ground her against me enough she could feel, _this is what she did to me…no other, no one, not anymore._

"A succubus. Like Sekhmet, a scarlet lady, the goddess of bloodlust." As soon as I said the augury word, she stilled.

"Lethal, cunning bitch can cut the ties of family, the bonds of fraternity, the chains of… _love._ She made me a marionette, with Aro the puppeteer. And they didn't have to take me away from my family because I went on my own, on immured, sleepwalking feet. From England to Italy, to their castle, to their den, destined to become one of their depraved followers. Possibly a prince among dead." I shook my head to erase that time and those images and Chelsea's greedy, growling, groaning, initial ambush–all it had taken to jettison me from filial union was her body in a dance of erotic proportions.

I was ruled by my cock.

"How?"

"What?"

"How did she take you?" Bella's elbows bellowed out and her lips no longer walked over my flesh.

"It wasn't like that."

"She seduced you," she was too persistent, too perceptive.

"Love, it didn't take much back then," I worried over her reaction, and revived… I was telling her about my kidnapping and near total death, and here she was getting jealous and scrappy?

Her emotions were as skewed as mine towards her!

"Being bound by Chelsea was like being in a coma. No, not a coma, not unconsciousness. It was being atrophied inside of locked-in syndrome. A blink took an effort I was incapable of. Telling her, telling _them_, 'no' was beyond me. Yet I heard it all, their plans, I understood the mass destruction of my family that would come to apocalypse at my hands."

Hugging me hard, she invoked for more, for this to finish.

I couldn't look at her.

"Back then it was just me--a time when I still went by _Edward_--Carlisle, Emmett, and Esme. Carl came from England for me." I swallowed hard, my voice monotone with unreleased emotion, "They had me in their stony chamber, where they'd once received us as treacherous, gracious hosts years previously. Aro was reaping all he could from my body… _all my thoughts and everything anyone had ever imagined in my presence._ His thin-skinned dermis jolting with the ampoules of my memories… he was afire before me. His beady, beetley, flinty eyes glowing, his knowledge and omniscience growing. Two of his loutish lads held down my arms, his tiny charmed one, Jane, watched with sadistic merriment, wondering if she'd get the chance to electrocute me again with her vile supernatural ability. Stupid fuckin' pie-face Alec clapped; friggin' flamer."

I needed to hold Bella, to just have her around me and on top of me… my lodestone, my savior, my sanity and sanctity.

She embraced me more closely and whispered, "Go on, baby."

"There'd be no blood, but my venom was going to fill their filthy coffers, more ludicrous lucre. Aro would use me, alive or dead. The Promethean-punk-ass-fuck had become a mad scientist**. **Victor Frankenstein had nothing on him. If I died while he starved me of my visions, he'd simply take my poison to his laboratory."

Quivering and silent, Bella's tears warmly wetted the base of my throat like blood.

I breathed deeply of her fragrance. _Bella was here, Bella was listening. Bella was real._

"Master race. We would be no more than lab rats if we didn't capitulate. _If we don't surrender._ For the second time, Carl came to my call. His hands opened–_he always purported, I'm a lover, not a fighter –_and he was a wily warrior. His voice charismatic, Carl had halted the festivities falling about my fried frame, "STOP." It was as if he sent the devilish dickheads to the time-out corner. My stomach hurting, I'd keeled over. Then he went all John-fuckin'-Wayne, "You want him? You gotta get through me, old friend," he'd addressed Asshole.

I'd wiped my eyes and looked for Ol' Dollor to come galloping up to save us from this abattoir. I didn't hear hooves, just Carl's barter, "Take my poison, Aro, _old man._ You've always wanted to know how I could survive as a doctor, leaving my rancid, bleeding patients intact. _Take as much as you want._"

"NO!" I'd shouted, the hasp of my voice, my throat so dry, like razors.

Carl commanded me quietly, forcefully, "Yes. Your mother would hang my dick out to dry, _son_, if I didn't own you thus."

_Esme, Elizabeth, my namesake, and my sire… my brother Emmett… I'd caused this commotion. _

"Cheerfully, Aro had set up sinister-looking paraphernalia**…**needles, test tubes, shiny glass and silver sharp instruments. The tête-à-têtes of his handmaidens and whores were like glee club cheers."

I wanted done with this! I wanted _tit-on-tit_. I wanted Bella to understand I didn't sleep in a casket, but my heart had been a grave before her. I held on for dear death… _my woman queen._

"Gathering my wits, I'd been too weakened to stop Aro from tearing into Carl's wrists. He was faster than Zeus, a thunderbolt, a black mamba. The lesion

opened and spilled acid-like drops in a quickening _drip-drop-drip_ to the test tube."

I stopped, resituated Bella against my long, pulsing pole so I could shunt against her. She draped over me but wasn't distracted enough.

_She wanted more._

"Cunt-ass Curtis, Caius, _whatever-the-fuck_, was definitely a faggot though. I caught him checkin' out Homo-'Ro's slack-ass inside his sackcloth. Back-hole, backhoe-Black Hole diving dipshit."

Bella giggled and cuddled closer.

"They have our essence, they have our secrets. _They don't own us._" I snagged her hair and watched the falling sun outside our balcony.

"They won't stop, Bella."

_This was just too friggin' much._

Still, she moved, turned, took off her shirt, _my shirt._

Our chests met, I cupped her breasts, washing away the filth of my past with her skin beneath mine.

Slick tongues, terrific want, _all our undoings, _Bella didn't stop, "And Jacob? The wolves?"

Lifting her slim body, guiding her down over me, I slowly filled her, "Not even Aro can penetrate their thoughts." I lunged up into her, watching her tempestuous tits bob until I stopped them mid-sway with my tongue on her. Thumbs branding her aureoles, soaking in the sight of her rearing up and riding me, I pulled her mouth to mine.

She braced back on my thighs, rolled her hips, "They're just boys, Eddie."

"Me… too…" I grunted.

Our fingers grabbed, settled, slipped, like my cock, her mouth, "The therianthropic, metamorphosing loup-garu can kill us."

Brandishing my cock inside of her, I loved it when Bella moaned, "_Ooooh." _Intimately gliding against me, hugging me with one arm while the other stretched behind her like she was balancing on a wild horse, she exhaled, _"He wouldn't."_

In each others laps, sinking, plundering, sighing, my dick voracious, "Your Cajun crew…" my balls got heavy with a ripple of pussy-flesh flexing around me, "those… wargs… volatile… _oh fuck_… can kill us, _loogaroo_."

She touched my temples, I feathered across the moist habitat of her back, a vague horizon just turning gold from the afternoon sun in our room, from our play on the beach. I wanted to keep her naked, vertical, horizontal, or fuckin' sitting on top of me, wrapping her legs around me.

_I wanted to keep her safe._

_I wanted to keep her._

_I wanted her._

_I wanted._

We slowed down. "Why don't you really tell me why you went on up to Myrtle Beach, Eddie?"

Constricted with desire, I could barely speak anymore. Bella took my silence for guilt, "Please tell me you didn't go to a strip joint up at Surfside Beach."

"What? No. You think I'd leave you like that just to go to a titty bar? Besides, Southern Belle is just downtown." Bella sensuously slid her fingers into my hair, and then yanked hard–I knew I shouldn't, but I fuckin' liked it. Her voice was fatal as she nipped my earlobe, "Go to the Suck, Bang, Blow biker hangout?"

"Huh?" Jesus H. motherfuckin' Cocksucker, she just had to say _Suck Bang Blow_. I was about to blow my wad, and she was blowing her top, "Can I just say you're _killing_ me here, Bella?"

My mouth tasted the nebula of freckles lighting across her nose and cheeks, I pushed her to the bed, my movements harder, more rugged, so fuckin' ready, "Three Volturi trackers were on their way to Mt. Pleasant." I hauled her calves around my waist and waited just at the entrance of her hot snatch, my cock throbbing, until she cried out, pressed up, "_And?"_

Fingers in the crazy rat's nest of her tresses, squishing her tits together, "We ended them."

Her hands molded to my shoulders, and she plumped my lips with her tongue, "Eddie I… _OH, yes, YES-GOD-YES!"_

I touched her arched neck with the edge of my teeth, I cursed God again for making me share the limelight, and then I was gnashing, panting, dying, "Bella, _Bella, I-_"

_Fuck._

While I cooled her well-fucked body, paying special attention to her pussy, silting through the fine flickers of soft hair, and her shapely breasts, Bella heated me up, rubbing the backs of her legs over my muscled calves and thighs.

Gentled, she made a pillow of the palm of my hand, "I wish you'd trusted me enough to tell me all this earlier, to keep your secret safe."

I leant up on an elbow, watching concern glitter her eyes, "It's not about that. It's about protecting _you._ I can see in, you block out… we're like Yin and Yang," of course I had to reference the friggin' Taoist male and female fundamentals underpinning the Kama Sutra, because now instead of putting Bella's mind at ease, I wanted to lick her, kiss her, and maybe try out that particular Yin and Yang position. I probed her nipples with my swift motion, watching them swell and darken.

Bella snapped her fingers in my face, "Eyes up here, baby."

I took a deep breath and looked up, from her peaks to her mouth, to her eyes, "Our _chemistry_, our link, your blood; these all mean we were meant to be together." She nodded, pursing her lips in concentration. "_The Volturi won't want us together unless we become their slaves._ We're too powerful, we will be… _we would be_, if you were a vampire too."

I quietly asserted, "If they can't have you and me both, they'll use you to get to me."

Opening over a deep sigh, Bella swore… I couldn't ever remember her swearing before, "_Fuck. _You were better off without me."

"Never," I disagreed, gathering her closely, closeting her in my strength, taking from her beauty, grace, lightheartedness, courage.

"But-"

"It doesn't matter. I'm still dead, but before you, I was a ghost." I laughed, "A ghost who had a fuckin' lot of fun, mind you! But I didn't really _experience_ anything. I'm not worried about me, love." My hands swarmed around her, everywhere, as if trying to impart some sort of forcefield, "I need to protect you."

Reaching up, she kissed me until our tongues meshed, "Protect me from?"

"The murderous miscreants. The long arm of raw law. The regime of rank revenants." I waggled my eyebrows menacingly. "You know, they're so old and nasty, they're like walking cadavers."

Bella's lips lifted playfully, "Aren't y'all too?"

I tickled her sides until she squealed, "Yeah, but you know I'm all sexy-like. And I'm telling Rose you just referred to her as the walking dead."

Bella slapped at me, "You are not, Eddie Cullen!"

"Oh yeah, that a fact, Miss Swan? You and what army is gonna' stop me?"

"Me and the Mob of the Underworld? The Lords of Limbo? The Demon Dons? The armpit of inhumanity?" she started giggling and rollicking lasciviously underneath me.

"You and the crotch-rot of Campania, huh?"

She tried to break out of my manacling fingers imprisoning her to the bed, "Ew! Gross, Eddie! Way to kill the mood."

"What mood, I'm not exactly turned on talkin' about the motherfuckers who tortured me."

"Oh really," she shifted her leg so it brushed against my enormously erect jock. I smirked and settled into the caress, "You caught me."

"_You've caught me, Eddie."_

I fastened her hand to my chest, the cavern that was empty of my heart, "You've captured me _here_."

_~~ll~~_

Real life was a heartless bitch. Bella had a shift at Mama's and finals to study for; I offered to tutor her, but she knew what kind of lessons I had in mind. And I needed to get back to Cainhoy to feed again, figuring a Boy Scout band of smug twats was likely to come across a resurrected mound of carcasses, or two, pretty damn soon.

In the Bronco, I turned down the music while Bella dozed. Her head was lolling against the window and even though I wondered if that little bit of banging would shake some of her thoughts loose, I rolled up an old sweatshirt to make a cushion for her. I let her sleep. I coulda felt bad, but I'd let her eat and nap at the hotel, right? I'd answered all her questions and shown her a good time.

I amused myself by collecting a few more church signs:

_The key to Heaven is hanging on a nail._

What the fuck? _Yeah_, and I'd just nailed Bella seven ways to Sabbath, probably more.

_Dust on your Bible means dirt in your life._

Went without sayin', I was a sinner.

_Flee temptation and don't leave a forwarding address!_

Done tried that with the Volturi, and look how well that'd worked out.

I chuckled and stretched over to gently close her mouth, running my hand over her lips and ruffling her hair when we reached the interstate. As usual, the shit was scattered with couches, lawn mowers, abandoned vehicles, and ladders. _How the hell?_ And who needed the Indy 500 when you had the obstacle course of the lowcountry's 526?

About twenty minutes from Swan Shambles, I was halted behind a stalled-out, beat-the-fuck-up GMC Jimmy. I think my Bronco winked at it. Better than a Jeep Liberty, was its thoughts. I couldn't agree more, thinkin' of Scrawny Mike Newton's faggoty ride.

Before I could even think about getting out to push the cunt back into drive, a big beefy Ladson gal hopped out with a cig hangin' from her mouth. She soothed the beast with her large hands and strolled with her hips _sway-swish-swaying. _At the back, she brunted in her shoulders and singlehandedly rolled the behemoth off to the side. I wound down my window as I passed, "Atta girl!" and threw a whistle into the mix. Shit like that made me proud to be a Southerner. In the rearview mirror I caught sight of a 'Strictly Scrap' towtruck idlin' up to her–_more like Strictly Crap, and you're a bit too late, mate._

I carried Bella into her house, depositing her and her bags and totes and _how the hell had she ended with more shit than she'd started with?_ She joked about my gallantry and, appallingly, I felt like blushing and 'aw shucks'ing'.

Bringing her hands again to my chest, willing for just something to start beating within in, I kissed her languidly, angling my mouth and sliding between her lips, murmuring total fuckin' nonsense all the while.

I let her go, stepped back, doffed my camo visor, "Y'all get some rest now, Miss." I left her with a wink, and about five backwards glances.

She was flushed, grinning, and gorgeous.

But Christ in the can, when I got back to Luxury Hollows and the double wide, what should I find? Gaddamn Em, on the front room couch, in a fuckety Snuggie! Jesus Shit. He'd been to the Super Wal-Mart without me. _Again._ How many times had I forced him away from the plastic-wrapped, flannel bodybags? Now he'd done got one.

His delicate constitution was showin' its ass. Not to be defeated by whatever feigned bug he was now sure he had, he jumped up like a kid in a tater-sack race on Field Day and started in, "Dude! I thought you'd never get home. I saw a leaflet last night for Free Shots. 'Course I had to check it out, thinkin' I'd be getting me a B52."

_Oh Holy Fuckin' Nyquil High._

"Can you believe what they tried to shoot me up with? Fuckin' H1N1 vax." He stomped his foot like a petulant child, and almost stumbled in his sleepsack. But just couldn't help thinking, _"Maybe that ain't such a bad idea after all."_

"Need I remind you about the whole tattooing fiasco?" I raised an eyebrow at my demented brother.

"Right, yeah, gotcha'." He slumped back to the sofa. "So, what about you? Bella really a virgin?"

I kept mum, but wanted to say, "_Not anymore_."

"No sloppy seconds?"

More silence.

"Well, mute motherfucker, you up for a Shake 'n Bake?"

Not sure that's what crafty Kraft had in mind, but I could do with a smoke.

Bubba rolled, I lounged.

I smoked, Bubba gestured, "Hey, _sunshine_, you're glowing man."

"Shut it, braw. Pretty sure that's the hashish addin' to my sweaty sheen."

* * *

~Y'all, I got a friggin' shitload of new alerts and stuff, more on that below. But you have no idea how excited me and the crew would be if you'd ALL review! (I know, really, I don't ask for much, do I?)~

****Veery important! Please alert _Rebelward Without a Cause_ -- the outtakes for this that explore other characters -- the next one will be Arshole (Aro) POV on the Volturi****

HUGE thanks to Kstew411 for talkin' up some filthy and funny white trash about Eddie and the crew on twitter. I mean, seriously, un-fuckin'-believable. Not to mention the entirely stupefying, stunning, simply spectacular rec she gave Dead Confederates at rob my world (seriously, I'm still reeling. She has the Midas touch – you know, like King Midas, not the auto body franchise): robmyworld(DOT)com/2010/04/06/dead-confederates-ff-recs-by-kstew411/

Dead Confederates now has a Facebook page (ta Gasaway Alley!)….just don't even mention it to Eddie (sure you can imagine what he thinks of all that…he's opened an account under duress. Last night he filled out his profile; typing, but decidedly not looking at the monitor the entire time…). He'd love for you to drop by, but it's pure Eddie, so not for the faint-hearted.

The DC's thread (affectionately known as the Double Wide) at Twilighted forums is always open for new visitors.

Eddie will tweet ya', but beware ;).

New banners by the delicious ms_ambrosia too!

**Links for everything are on my profile.**

Bubba spewed an epic swearword in Feed Your Head that fanfiction refuses to post, what's up with that, fanfiction? So, we're _bothered._ It went a little somethin' like this: Bubba paced around like a caged bear, mumbling a jumbled mess all rolled up into excessive swearing, "Mother-fucker-bullshit-bastard-screweduptheduffy-ehJizzwon'tmind-flangeandFUCK!"

It would make me most happy if you'd give mine and winterstale's _Tigresse_ a go – it's two chapters and complete. Or, you know, _Youth without Age, _ha ha! Got an o/s with Viola Cornuta coming out soon and it's very cool so alert me.

Cheers, Rie~


	20. No Grits, No Glory

'Bout the best thing I ever did was hook up with my betas: Vanessarae, whom I've known for many years, and Viola Cornuta…I may not have known you nearly as long, but it feels like it . So, many, many thanks and all my love.

'Bout the best thing that ever happened to me was hooking up with a bunch of the most wonderful women in the fandom: mine at the DW and Eddie's on Facebook. My hearfelt thanks to you all.

Winterstale, Miss F./AngryBadgerGirl, thenextGayleKing, blondie AKA robin, and Viola Cornuta; biggest love for all the friendship, funnies, and giving feedback on all my various writing.

A final ta to Jewles, Gasaway Alley, Mountain Spokes, and thenextGayleKing for church signs and bumper stickers. Keep 'em coming, ladies!

Huge yay for new readers and reviewers; thanks so much for the faves, alerts and pimpage!

Skedaddle sweet-asses back to _Rebelward Without a Cause_ for a glimpse into the mind of one sick, funny, scary Volturi (it's not who you think). There are also chapters on Mama Brown, Alice, and Rose that are important as they shed some light on some of what you'll read here and in the future.

Rie: I hope you're not letting the infamy and glory go to your head, Eddie.

Eddie: There's only one thing going to my head, Rie, and she starts with 'B' and ends with 'Aaaaah'

Disclaimer: Eeny meeny miny NO.

~~Babies, buckle the fuck up~~

* * *

**No Grits, No Glory**

I'd like to say the subsequent two weeks found us fucking like… well… _rabbits,_ but it wasn't so. Between work and her final exams, Bella was busy 'bout near all the time, and me? Well I had copious amounts of time-wasting to sort out.

There was beer drinking and bear hunting—snagged me a nice, fat, black bear and tried to decide whether that'd be an appropriate gift for Bella's graduation. I imagined the seven-foot furry carcass would keep her busy for a long damn time, but since that would've messed with my agenda to get her bent over every available surface as soon as she had her diploma in hand, I decided against it.

'Course I staked out Mama Brown's whenever Bella had a shift. Miss Cassandra Brown no longer harassed me, not after that mornin' she'd set me to rights, and Caleb made up the back booth for me and Bubba with our own checkerboard.

Either Bella or Rose swung by with our refills so we had ample opportunity to grab a quick pinch, tweak, or slap while they bussed the hell out of their tables. Fucking customers ate 'em up in those minuscule cut-offs and knotted shirts. I became pretty goddamn adept at ignoring the downtown dickheads who kept thinking about my girl and her endless legs and pretty cleavage. I had to; otherwise Mama's would be less of a barbecue joint and more of an abattoir. Those poofters in their pink Lacoste shirts and their seersucker suits; I might not have dead-headed them, but I did make sure to snarl at them when I ran across them in the parking lot.

_Rabbits._ While I took 'bangin' the bishop' to new heights, Bella seemed happy enough. The secret smile on her plush lips and the way she purred at me when she tousled and tugged my hair in passing gave me an inkling that she'd replenished her stock of jolly-jellied ranchers. I let it slide because, having been on intimate terms with her luscious alluvial delta—that patch of land with its tasty little feathery bush--with my face, mouth, tongue, fingers, and cock, I knew there'd be no comparison between my jock and the silicone stand-ins.

I did manage to coax some phone sex out of her, _finally_, which helped alleviate some of the ache in my balls. Working her up nice and slow, I talked real low and dirty to Bella and damn near busted my nut as soon as she ordered, "Take off your jeans, baby."

I stopped mid-stroke on my prick and smoothed, "Already off, Bella."

"You been a bad boy already?"

_Oh fuck yes, you know it._ "Yeah," shit yeah.

"You wanna' finish yourself off, or do you need a little verbal encouragement?"

"Encouragement, definitely encouragement, love." I twisted the chenille bedspread in my fist and watched my dick jump in excitement; I swear the fucker was grinnin' at me.

"_Good._ Now wrap your big hand right around the base of your delicious cock," she breathed, and I didn't need to be asked twice.

"Pull your fist right up to the top, baby, and make a tight funnel with your hand, can you do that?"

"Uh huh," my head was turned to the side, my hips already airborne, my stomach so fucking fixed.

"You gotta' be tight now, tight and smooth and wet. Why don't you smear some of those creamy drops of semen down your shaft, honey."

I moaned, "Jesus Christ, woman."

"You like that?" I nodded my head; my friggin' thighs were shaking already. "It's okay, baby, you don't need to talk, I know you like it. You've got me hoisted above you, holding onto my hips with your fingers cupping my ass, and I'm on my knees and I'm begging you, just begging you, to let me slide over you."

_Goddangamighty!_

"You're such a sexy tease sometimes; you keep dipping me down just to take your lovely head in and lifting me off. Are you pushing your cock through your fist?" Her voice was grainy, wanton.

"_Yeah, Bella._"

"You just keep on pulling and pushing, just like that, right over the tip of your shaft. _Mmmm_, I can see the muscles in your forearms so hard, so taut with restraint. You want to slide me right over you, but you want to make me plead first. I'm biting my lip and slipping my hands from your chest to your groin to your balls."

She was killing me, I couldn't do anything but beg, "Bella, please, love, let me fuck you."

Her voice dropped another register, "Just as I run my index finger down from your sac over that rigid bridge to your ass, you lower me all the way… onto… _you_."

Her voice broke, "All the way down now, baby, _hard_."

_Shit!_ It was only my punishing grip on my dick that kept me from cumming right then. I held it.

"Go on, I wanna' hear you as you raise me up so slowly."

"Bella," the phone was vibrating with the pressure of my hand, "I'm gonna' cum."

Our breathing was staggered, rugged. "Not yet."

My eyes slammed shut and I gritted my teeth.

"You got your hand on your head again?" she brazenly asked.

"Yes." I was hard, horny, and I needed to fuckin' let loose my juice now!

"Bring it down, baby, bring it down hard and fast and keep going… _ahhh… yes!"_

That was the last thing I heard because I crushed the fucking cell the minute I roared, and my seed splattered all over my stomach.

It took me a full twenty minutes to gather my wits enough to wipe up and get to the landline in the kitchen. As soon as she answered, Bella laughed, "Busted a nut _and _broke your cell phone?"

I slid down the wall, laughing with her.

About all I accomplished between our sexcapades at Kiawah Island and Bella's graduation--aside from feeling like I was gittin' tendonitis from all the hand-to-gland combat until Emmett went runnin' off to the drugstore to stock up on ACE bandages and a tub of Icy Hot--was payin' the bills and trying to keep Miss Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffters off my back. Then there was Maw, chewing me out because she'd caught wind of me stealing Bella's playthings—_thanks Carl; whatever happened to dicks before chicks?_—or alternately looking at me all sad-faced because I was sterile, and what the hell was up with that? Had she really thought I was going to make her some kind of creepy vampire granny?

_Jesus Help-me Christ. _

My biggest achievement was burning Bubba's Snuggie in the corroded, tin trash can out in the back forty. The rusty, holey heap of shit made a nice enough resting place for his man-sized sleeping bag, and it's crispy, synthetic ash mingled with the rattled, empty skulls of a fair few coons and possums, bare of flesh and bleached of bone.

I called Bella to make sure she was expectin' us at Wando Wankschool's graduation ceremonies. My woman sounded tired and ready to be done with it but perked up when she confirmed what I'd already sussed out, "Hey, remind me to thank your Maw; I got a GoodVibes care package from her last week."

Leave it to backwater, bra-burnin' M'Esme…the pussy apartheid was over.

The day of her liberation from high school hell, I washed up thoroughly, plugged my nose while I brushed my teeth, and dressed in a freshly-pressed, white shirt with the cuffs rolled back. My jeans were clean, and I rearranged my dick so it sat more comfortably. At the Bronco, I wiped my palms on my thighs; I knew Chief Boyardee was going to be there and possibly some damn lycanthropes too. The jitters made me want to crack a forty ounce, but Bella didn't agree with drinking and driving so there'd be none of that.

Bubba, Rose, Cranky Alice, Jizz and I sat well back in the rows of white folding chairs. Bubba kicked my foot when the Head Officer with a hard-on for me passed by. I pushed right back with my heel until I heard the little crack of his pinky toe.

Jazz clucked like a mother hen and threw some calming hippie bullshit vibes at us.

The scholars marched one-by-one up to the podium. There she was, my gal. The broadest smile spread over my mouth, and I stood up to whistle like a common construction worker. I could see her quaint blush from here as she sought me through the glaring May, South Carolina sun.

Bubba gave a, "Whoot-whoot-whoot!" and Jazz doffed his latest Stetson. Rose sighed happily, her hands folded against her breast. Alice sat on her hands and tapped her foot.

Gathering to toss their caps in jubilation, all those kids in their black robes put me in mind of the ignoble Italian Volturi. I shouldered through groups of women with squalling rash-faced babies jostling on their hips and spotty, sunglass-wearing youths, fathers beaming with pride, "Sorry, ma'am, 'scuse me, miss, pardon me, sir." I just needed to get to her.

Lifting her up so every round, gorgeous part of her coasted over me, I kissed her chastely on the cheek, "Congratulations, love."

Leaning back, Bella smiled. Then she frowned, "Oh my, Eddie, you smell like Ben Gay!" Her adorable nose wrinkled.

_Huh? Was she calling me gay now?_

My confusion apparent, she sniffed around me a bit, running her nose up and down my neck and shoulders to my arms. She raised my stallion-stroking hand, "Eddie, you did _not_ beat off so much you needed muscle rub, did you?" She was holding back a smirk.

I grinned and looked aside, hauling her ass back to me just as I saw Chuck making his way to us. Bella stood on her tiptoes to speak softly against my ear, "I thought you never felt pain, honey."

_I've felt pain._

Her nasty nylon gown had taken up a few inches over her calves up to her knees just so I caught sight of yellow, ruffles, a hint of lace… _the dress._ The buttercream-make me wanna' cream my jeans-dress; Clinton eat your almost-impeached heart out. Monica and midnight blue had nuthin' on my girl.

Sweeping aside the mane of her mahogany hair, I planted a wet kiss on her neck and pinched a round butt cheek, "This damn dress makes my dick hurt, and you know it."

Bella wrangled loose until just our fingertips touching attached us. She opened her other arm to her dad.

Coming of age, Bella was a woman, and what the hell did I know about her? I didn't have a clue what her plans were, what she aspired to.

All I fucking knew was I wanted that ugly robe to join my siblings' and mine, galleried at Maw and Paw's homestead. All I _knew_ was I wanted her forever.

Cheroot Charlie and I looked each other over; same old, same old. We gave each other the usual less-than-hearty pleasantries:

"Son." Succinct nod.

"Sir." Firmer than necessary handshake.

We played tug-o-war a bit with Bella until I let her loose. Her daddy turned her away from me to laud her with a real, proper hug, "I'm so proud of you, Bella." He ruffled her hair, "You done good."

In the background of my non-stop mind, I heard cloying callous Alice inveigling, "Alright now, enough with the Beverly Hillbilly Show, we've got places to be."

_Right, places._ It wasn't like we were expected at a friggin' high-falutin' soiree or something. _No._

With the double-talking diviner keeping watch I wasn't even going to have time to get a leg over Bella in the back of the Bronco.

_Yeah, I fucking knew the meaning of pain._

We were headed on a most unlikely outing for our graduating girl's celebration, but what the fuck wasn't improbable about our relationship? We were much more star-crossed lovers—_and much more getting it on, least we had been_—than those two ill-fated fuckin' suicide pact paramours, cap-you-in-the-ass Capulet and mount-up-Montague.

Aside from the fact we were probably all going to die, there was nothing Romeo and Juliet about us.

Didn't matter anymore. The tarot cards had been dealt, and gypsy-junkie Alice held the hand too close to her chest for me to see.

Tapping Bella on her shoulder instead of her ass because she was still chatting with her dad, I gained her attention, "You ready to head, love?"

Charlie quirked a hairy caterpillar eyebrow at my endearment, Bella swallowed a laugh at my mention of 'head', my head stood at attention because of what she was obviously thinkin'.

The sheriff swilled some baccy around his lower lip and spat to the ochre grass, "Alrighty then, I'll just follow you _kids_ up to St. George."

_Aw, man._

Georgie-porgie-puddin' and pie--_never mind that rhyme because it made me want to dine on some pussy pie_—looked like he was about to cry.

And here I was thinkin' of porkin' her while Daddy Dickweed just wanted to have his baby girl all to himself for a day.

Lookin' all hangdog after his daughter, sharpish on my ass, I had to give Old Man and the See Too Much Evil a bone, "You sure you don't want to ride up with your father?"

"You're sweet, baby. He'll be fine on his own, he's done it even longer than I have," her eyes rummaged to a darker umber, and I didn't need to read her mind to know what she was thinking. _Not near as long as you have, Eddie._ She nodded and those orbs welled and her bottom lip trembled. _Pain, pining. _She curled a hand into my hair and kissed me sweetly, "Just wait a minute."

She caught up with Charlie and made him droop to her before assuring him, "I love you, Dad. I'll see at the festival, okay?"

The biggest shit-eating grin softened the hard planes of that man's face as he pushed his daughter away, _to me_.

The love in his eyes was overshadowed by his implicit threat, _"You drive carefully and treat her well, boy."_

I tilted my head and opened the door for Bella.

She stopped for a second to unzip her graduate skin.

Lo and behold, I think the fuckin' heavens opened up, and I was standing on the precipice of Hell's pit at the same time because it was yellow, it was the dress, and it made my prick upgrade from highly aroused to paralytic, priapic tumescence.

I levered my seat back because I didn't think my dong was gonna fit, not with that voyeuristic pleasure to peruse for a whole hour.

I brushed across her knees to forage through the glove box and handed a really badly wrapped package to Bella.

Her color heightened, her skirt rose, my dick was gonna split my jeans, "Open it."

Ripping through the hideous Dollar General paper, Bella squealed, "An iTouch?"

"Yeah, you know, just in case you drop the iPod in the potty again." Damn, why did this woman make me feel sheepish.

"iTouch, huh?" she grinned, and _touched_ my knee. Fondling the sleek, vibrant mp3 player, Bella joked, "So, what are you really thinking, Eddie?"

"Yeah, alright. It's a little joke." _I touch, I wanted to touch, I had touched. _iTouch was better than a body snatcher iPod. I squinted at her, "But fucking Apple and Steve Hand-Jobs; the cunts update their shit before you can even figger out how the hell to work the first generation bullshit." She was gleeful. She wound down her window as I tapped the new jewel-like player, "Shit's multi-generational, just like me."

Her flattering eyelashes settled low like damp moth-wings.

"Anyway, just a back-up plan kind of thing," I knocked my knuckles on the dashboard and turned the key in the ignition.

Her hand found my thigh, then the loose tails of my shirt, and my stomach. "We don't need a back-up plan, Eddie."

_Yeah we did. _We needed a goddamn strategy and warriors and weapons and wealth and more than lo-. _Fuck._ We needed more than just this. My sight splintered through all the visions Archangel Alice had shown me—of death and Bella as a vampire and the flapping heartbeat amongst Italianate robes in a brightlit courtyard.

Her hand to my face was so loving and simple and home. I closed my eyes and inhaled; _I wanted to forget all the shit._

Heading up the 526 Speedway to the even more racetrack-like I26, I lamented I couldn't pull Bella to me, right against me. "Fuckin' bucket seats."

"What?"

"Next time we're taking your truck, baby." I reached over and made as if to drag her over the console into my lap.

Bella held onto her seatbelt, "Huh?"

"You're not close enough," I laid my arm over her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "That behemoth of yours has a bench seat, right?"

A gloomy cast encapsulated her form. She freed herself from me and pushed the window control up and down; one inch up, one inch down.

We'd passed the Highway 176 Junkyard. Their made-at-home commercials were pure genius with the grandmother, her of the smoky crumbled apple face and hard lips, "Just past the crossroads of Jedburg and Pinopolis." She scrunched down to her two towheaded grandsons, "Y'all save those coins, now." Gap-teethed grins followed her urging.

_Philistines._

Why couldn't I just let it go?

_Let it all go._

Bella was limp, stuffed full of hurt.

She tangled the seatbelt.

Her words were shorn, she wouldn't look at me, "We used to have an old Dodge. Sometimes we slept in it."

Closer to the door now, Bella hugged herself, "Mostly we lived in it."

I turned off the radio.

"It had a bench seat." She nodded her head, then shook it, fingered the locks and played across the glove compartment, "I used to keep my clean clothes in a glove box, or hanging from the seat back. Least it was roomy enough to sleep."

_This woman._

"Bella." I touched her hand, and she slipped from me.

"It's okay."

_The fuck it was!_

She looked at me, woman-girl, lover-friend, _mate_. Her eyes strobing as if I were foreign to her; she'd defend her mom to the end. _Because that's what we were supposed to do._

Crossing her legs and pedaling the ruffles down over her knees, she frowned, "She put me in schools, took me out of schools, _home schooled._ She usually forgot the lesson plan." Even while looking down, Bella's nostalgic smile floored me.

She tossed her hair back, proudly, "We made do. That's just what you do, Eddie. It's hard to be a single mom. A latchkey kid with Fruity Pebbles for dinner." Pausing to remember, Bella smiled and licked her lips, "Sometimes we had Dairy Queen instead of supper, or frozen dinners on TV trays. Sometimes we even paid for HBO in the rare motel room, and that was pretty fancy."

My heart, that dead, charred thing, felt like it was pounding! I bit back insults and glared at the road, its straight line littered with glossy buzzard wings and guts.

_There was nothing glorious about this._

"Please don't. Just," Bella looked me straight in the eye, "She's my mom, you know?"

_Yeah, I knew._

I didn't have a drop of her forgiveness though.

She played with my hand that was slowly gathering her skirts from knee to mid thigh, halting the criminally wanting fingers from getting any higher, "You know, your mom was just trying to save you."

She stroked my arm, tickling the hairs and raining over my elbow. I clamped down on her leg, punishing the fabric of her dress into wrinkles. All my features collapsed; I'd never forgiven my mother, Elizabeth, for what she'd done. For giving me to Carlisle and dying herself.

_Fuck._

God fuckin' forbid, if I had a child, wouldn't I do the same?

She couldn't have foreseen the misery, the miserliness, the melancholy of wretched years.

She'd just wanted me to live, in the only possible manner.

I let go my grip on Bella's buttercup dress and fluttered my hand up to her shoulder, "I'm sorry Renee wasn't here today," _because I'd have liked to have a word or two with the deadbeat mom._

Kissing my palm, she curled towards me, "Me too."

Bumping over the road that seemed under everlasting repair, we drove along in silence.

Coming up behind a deluxe Cadillac SUV with the bumper sticker 'REPUBWN' we both chuckled. Bella joked, "Republicans Whine?"

Winking at her, I countered, "Need to move the 's', love; Republican Swine."

I rolled my eyes at a Hooters billboard–tits and owls? The two should never meet: one was for sucking or fucking and the other for huntin', in desperate times.

The chick's breasts were fake anyhow.

Driving with one wrist over the steering wheel, I rubbed Bella's closest leg, touched her cheek, smoothed her hair, and caressed her earlobe.

_God, I fucking loved her tits and ass._

Impishly, she wound her way up my inner thigh so my cock twitched, my breath hitched, my head cocked, and my knee jerked so hard it dented the dashboard.

Growling, "Fuckin' dashboard," I held my breath and waited for Bella to handle me just so, just fuckin' right, just the way only she knew how.

She skipped my crotch altogether and dribbled her fingertips up and down the buttons of my shirt, gurgling on laughter, "Baby, I don't think you can get a car without one of those."

Turnin' off the main drag, we followed a country road that took us through a town named Pregnell. I wondered what the teen pregnancy rate was there, and if'n it was twinned with Palin's hometown in Alaska, because, you know, abstinence had worked out so well for her family.

_Family._

_The future._

"Bella?"

"Hmmm?" she was idling, watching the fields and shacks and railroad tracks glide by.

"What are your plans now?" I frowned, stared at the tarmac, tried to hit a crunchy June bug or two as they were forced to my windshield instead of dodging their beetle-bullets.

_Splat._

"Well, I ain't really decided what I want to do yet. I feel like I'm just starting to find my feet here. I was thinking I'd like to go into business for myself, maybe sell my taxidermy, work up enough skill to give classes on the side," she looked all dreamy and shit. "Like Mama, you know? She's an enterprising woman and offered to help." "Oh!" Bella sat right up, "I went up to see Billy-Sue Pernell in Summerville, and she's offered to apprentice me!"

She kissed my cheek, "Thank you for the gift voucher."

_The gift that kept on giving._

"I'd like to move out of Charlie's," _Yeehaw! _ "Maybe room with Rose." _Damn._

She giggled, "Hey, it'd be easier to get around Rose than my dad."

Obviously she still knew nothing of vampire hearing.

"I'll still be working at Mama's of course, and I'm going to enroll in a couple business courses at Trident Tech come fall," Bella crossed her legs and tucked at a couple of pleats.

"That sounds good, love." _Better than good, fuckin' great!_ She wasn't moving away or going off to college.

I sneaked a few glances at her legs and wanted them in my lap. _Goddammer!_ "Fuckin' console," I moaned again. I wanted to pulverize that shit, always getting in my way.

"Aw, let me _console_ you, baby," she chuckled and got close enough to push her breasts against my upper arm.

Driving over Minus Bridge, crossing Four Hole Swamp, way the hell out in Bumfuck Nowhere, we passed a dragway. _Might have to come back for that._

A twat in a 4x4 jimmied-up Toyota turned down a rabbly dirt road. Cunt's bumper sticker read: _Jack it up high, fat girls can't climb_.

"Now that's just plain uncalled for," Bella complained.

I had to agree, nuthin' wrong with a voluptuous woman. You just needed to know how to roll 'em.

The chapels were lined up one after another; did these hicks need that much redemption?

_'Try Jesus._

_If you don't like him,_

_The Devil will always take you back.'_

_'Want to avoid burning?_

_Use 'son' block.'_

Well, those surely cut to the heart of the matter.

The closer we got to St. George, the better the view got.

A hubcap semaphore on a paved front yard read: _Osama Baraq. Say No to a Foreigner for President._

Yeah, that shit about took up an acre. Screw Yankee ingenuity, we had us some Scalawags down in these here parts.

_Small-minded assholes._

Obviously they hadn't gotten the news, McCain and Palin had lost. Them and Jorge DUH-byah were outta' here. I'd lived long enough to see every brand of shithead pass through the White House doors, and sometimes that even included a democrat or two.

There was a little clapboard shed with a hand-painted sign purporting _Fantasie Lingerie_ and two doors down from that was Farmboy's Barbecue: _Best dang barbecue south of the Dixon!_

The next roadside church touted: _Sunday AM, when GOD comes to church._

Bella pointed her finger out the window, "Of course, because the rest of the week he's playin' poker and drinkin' with his pals, Luke, Mark and John."

I was less than amused about Uley's Body Shop and Collision Repair.

Hunk of junk, piece of crap garage.

I smelled matted wolf fur from a mile off.

All big-eyed and happy, Bella noticed the same damn thing, "Oh yeah, Sam lives on out here; hopefully he'll be at the fair."

_Great._

DC's Auto Garage was next, and I hoped the grease monkeys gave the mongrels a run for their money.

On the outskirts of St. George there were posters plastered on every beaten, bent over streetlamp advertising the South Carolina _World_ Grits Festival. Damn, this shit was about as global as the Charleston _International_ Airport.

With Piggly Wiggly as the event founder, there was said to be a corn tossing contest—_I could toss better'n any motherfucker, referring to my own cob of course_—a parade, and a wheelbarrow contest—_wait, wasn't that another Kama Sutra position?_ I needed to get Bubba to whittle me another figure.

Turning down Main Street, trying _not_ to hit pedestrians, I prepped Bella, "So, everyone's going to be here, okay?"

"Got it, Eddie. I'll be fine," she assured me.

Thumbing over my knuckles, Bella sauntered along beside me. Damn filthy sun made her flittery dress nearly transparent.

I picked up a leaflet and read the sponsors aloud to her, "Sweatman Dock Builders, Carolina Dollar Plus, gotta' have the Waffle House, _not the International House of Pancakes,_ LeGrande Fender, Inc. and Waste Management."

"Dang, it's a veritable who's who of the deep South!" Bella jumped on her tiptoes to get a better look at the food stands, seller's stalls and carnival rides. Her eyes lit up when she saw the sugary-spun, cotton candy vendor.

I elbowed to the front of the line and bought her a cone right off.

She draped the fluff over her mouth in pastel swirls that saturated to crystal blue and yellow with every succulent pass of her tongue, "Want some?"

I declined, whispered at the side of her sweetened lips, "I want somethin', but that ain't it."

The cordoned-off street was teeming with every Tom, Dick, Harry, Billy-Bob, and Bobby-Sue complete with farmer's tans and mullets, crewcuts, perms, and even a Mohawk or two. Flip-flops, Crocs, Timberlands and cowboy boots. Ballcaps, visors, sunhats and cowboy hats.

Every strata of society was proudly represented.

And the whole fair smelled worse than Westvaco mill wafting its effluvia up the Cooper River; I didn't think Waste Management and Co. were doin' their job properly.

We passed a stall pawning yellow and black street signs to the likes of _Lion Xing._

Under an awning shouting out '_Foot Long Sausage',_ I saw Alice. She was doing her usual human trick of yawning and tapping her foot. Her foot that was laced up to her thighs in black boots. Leaning back on his elbows, chawin' a toothpick, AC/DC Jizz lounged beside her against the aluminum stand of the sausage sellers.

Brandishing her cotton candy cone like a sword, Bella made towards them.

She pushed Alice's parasol out of the way, "You enjoying the festivities?"

She rapped on the counter and ordered a basket of fries and waited for Crazy-stick-to-you-like-glue Alice's answer.

With a secretive smile, the Traipsing Tease cajoled, "Oh, yes, Bella. Just look at all the fodder."

Bella paled, "But you're all -"

"Vegetarians?" Alice answered. "Very true. But it doesn't hurt to look, or smell."

I shared a stormy look with Jazz and pulled Bella closer to my side.

Alice seemed angry.

I still couldn't figure out the rattle-trap contraption of her head.

She sidled up to Bella, who regained her posture so her comely dress sat all kinds of kinky and right over her tatas and gams, "Why are you _here_, Alice?"

And she didn't fuckin' mean _here_, in St. George, at the 25th Anniversary World Grits Festival. She meant _here, _in our lives.

Cocking her head to the side, pseudo-placid Alice took the bait, "Why, Bella. I thought you knew. I'm here for Jazz," she forced a smile, "and for you. _Why are you here, _Bella?'

Linking her arm through mine and squeezing way too close to my nuts with her other hand, Bella made it clear, "I'm here for Eddie."

_Fucking right you are._

That seemed to mollify the Ornery Oracular Oompah.

Junior attempted to distill the tension as Bella's fries were served up, "You know, Eddie, this reminds me of the time you brought Cacky to the Blessing of the Fleet at Alhambra Hall."

_No, Jazz, no!_

Bella ate a fry.

And the Butt-Bailer carried on, "Yeah, wasn't she your last lay? Damn, that was a while ago, right? Cacky's Bride-Aid, if I remember right."

_No, just keep on with the empath bullshit, man!_

I smacked my hand over his mouth.

Bella was suddenly best fuckin' friends with Alice, and her eyes were a furnace, "Khaki? That's a color, not a name." _Yeah._ "Furthermore," her cheeks were flaming and her fingertip pointy as hell against my chest, "Cack is _shit._"

She only swore when she was riled up.

This wasn't good.

Struggling to gag Junior and placate Bella, I mumbled the dumbest thing yet, "She weren't near as awful as Chelsea."

Slapping my arm away, Bella's dress concertinaed around her hips when she made away to the central stage.

"Fuck it all, Jazz!"

I followed Bella through the throng and caught up with her just as Bubba was weighing in. For the Pit O' Grits. Underwritten by 96.9 _The most country music—_The Wolf. _Yeah, this was another fucked-up field day for me._

I didn't give a good shit if she was pissed with me; I snuck my hands around her and hauled her back, "That's all ancient history, love."

She snorted, but snuggled nearer.

I took the opportunity to snack on her neck, "I can't even remember anyone before you."

She sighed and leaned her head to the side, "Shut it, Em's gettin' his stats."

Grits, tits, spats, tats… Bubba won the competition, hands down. He'd managed to stuff an extra fifty friggin' pounds of grist meal down his shorts. He pounded his chest like a gorilla before jumping from the bleachers to Rose, squelching her in a sickening hug.

"Look, you have a century on me, I get it, Eddie." Bella scowled down at her freshly squeezed lemonade.

"It's just, _Cacky?_" She wouldn't look at me, and that hurt.

"No, you know what? It's not even Cacky," she pierced me. "You've probably been with a million women,"—_not nearly that many_—"but I'm not going to doubt what you and I have."

I couldn't look at Bella. I toed the litter of plastic cups and paper baskets aside.

"It's Chelsea," I looked up. "It's Chelsea and this whole Volturi thing." Bella crushed her cup and lobbed it to the nearest trashcan. "I'm scared, Eddie."

_Goddamnit._

Pulling her to me, I had no words of comfort.

I wish I did.

"I get it, I know you can't tell me it's going to be all right," her hands joined behind my neck, her eyes were too liquid.

My voice was harsh, I exhaled, "I can't."

Holding my woman so close, I _wanted _to swear nothing would happen to her, to us, but I couldn't. This I made certain, "I will die before anyone hurts you, _love._"

Bella struggled away, holding her stomach, her brow creased, "No. _No, no no._ Don't you ever say that, baby. _Don't you ever think that way._"

Reeling her back to me, I settled Bella, soothed her. "_Shhh, _I'm not going anywhere."

Reconciled, we'd stopped outside of the Apron Hut. A pinafore in camouflage gained Bella's attention as I dried her moist cheeks with my shirttails, "I need to get Maw a thank you gift. You think she'd like one of these?"

"They got pink?" The devil knew I couldn't tell, "She likes that color."

After purchasing the present, we went on to find Charlie nattering outside the Sandman Motel that had been barricaded with barbed wire. Like a small town bard, he held court. There was skinhead yokel cop with lips fat as tomato worms and another hobnobbing blue-and-white goblin who had the skinny black-shank-yer-ass-in-a-jail-cell eyes of a termite. They all drank from Styrofoam cups of coffee and ate off the funnel cakes they were making putty out of.

Bella gave her dad the thumb's up.

I knew churned-up Charlie was watching, but I couldn't keep my hands away from Bella; it'd been too long since I'd felt her riding over me, her melons in my mouth and her hips in my hands. Her nettling hair striking my pelvis. I had no sense of decency when I propped her against the frail railing of the carousel.

"Eddie!" she trilled and turned her hips to mine, "Better kiss me quick, honey."

I nabbed her lips and played over her nips and caged her against the barrier, "Baby, I just want to make love to you." Envisioning her naked and spread out on my lap, one hand pressing her tits together, my fingers sliding down her tummy to her slit and pushing into her, _I wanted her._

Propelling me away, she disarmed me with her shrewd look, "Not now, Charlie's watching."

_Chump change Charlie._

We walked on; I turned my head to catch more of her sexy legs with every step she took.

_This fuckin' sucked._

We both stopped and squinted at Hard-ass Alice inside the airbrush tattoo parlor. _Well, as Bubba had made sure, shit just wouldn't work any other way._

We listened to the artist sell her wares, "Honey, they last for five days."

Alice came away with a henna-vamp-tramp-stamp. Skull and crossbones across her bony shoulders.

Bubba was next in line, he flipped me the bird, "Aw yeah, _hawg._"

The House of Horrors was a tumbledown travesty, and let's just not go there. I had my own horrors to contemplate. Couldn't help myself from snarling, "Boo!" at the scrawny Skeletor drumming up business outside. I think he might have shit himself. Bella pulled me away, tsking, "Eddie!"

Granny 'Grits' Nell shelled sunflower seeds from her lounger.

On down the road, we lingered for about two seconds in front of the Corn Shucking Contest funded by Carolina Tractor, just long enough to see Jazz on stage next to a bucket of cobs wearing a lopsided grin and Jacob seated next to him wreathed in a permanent snarl. _Jesus fucking Christ._ We hied away to the noise of the amassed South Carolinians with their missing teeth, ripped tees, and cut-off jeans, ricocheting off the rickety Ferris wheel when the DJ announced, "And the winner is the young, blond man with the fastest hands in the Southeast!"

_Obviously._

I saw Alice approaching and turned left. Rose was churning up the tumbleweed from the opposite direction.

Doing a one-eighty, I came face-to-face with Jazz. His boots were untied, and the tongue flapped out like a dog in heat, his self-satisfied smile was completed by a victory toothpick. Having something in his mouth at all times helped him overcome the desire to feed from the plump blood-filled populace.

_Shit, I did not want to do this now._

Cornered by my siblings and their girlfriends, Bella becalmed me, "Just simmer down now, Eddie. Let me handle this."

_Okay?_

Apart from the Sly Nisse, everyone towered over Bella as she sashayed into the middle of a clusterfuck in the making. Shading her eyes, she looked up at Junior, "So, let me get this straight; you're a reformed butt-muncher?"

He was blushing on the inside, "Yes'm."

Pivoting to contagiously congenial Em, she cranked her head back another inch, "You're suffering from Munchhausen Syndrome."

Em guffawed and gruffly denied, "Uh, no… well, I mean… I get indigestion sometimes. Vampires can get sick too, you know."

We all rolled our eyes.

Scanning the throngs ambling by, Bella wondered, "Carl's not here?"

We shook our heads.

"No matter. So, Carl-dad-sire _whatever_ gets the munchies?"

"Yep," came the chorus as we struggled not to laugh.

"And both he and M'Esme like to 'munch'?"

_How the hell did she know about meal-based meetings? We'd stolen that term from the BDSM community to represent our usual Sunday dinnertimes at the bluff._

"It was just a hunch," she raised an eyebrow at me and tapped her head, no doubt cottoning onto my disbelief.

Onto Alice, Bella began, "You're a little bit like a munchkin cat, heard of those? It's my next taxidermy project, I hope." The tiny terror hissed like, well, a really pissed off feline. "But you've also got some Lily Munster in you… I know you're just trying to guard everyone, Alice."

I think I about hocked up a furball, Alice's dander settled; she even friggin' preened and simpered.

Bella was already giggling by the time she got to Rose, "You think Munchie Legaux, the new quarterback at University of Cincinnati, is hot."

Rose lasered Bella with the evil eye, "I told you that in private, Bella!"

"Hey, I'm sure Emmett doesn't mind, do ya' big guy?" Bella feinted to smack him on the rump but stopped just short of making contact.

Bubba blinked a couple times, "Uh, guess not?"

Rose huffed.

Sashaying right the fuck up to me in her golden, ribbony sandals, Bella called my bluff, "You're a beautiful man," she ran her hand slowly over my face, across my lips, down my throat. Sidling closer, she ruffled her fingers through my hair to my neck and whispered lowly, "You're an exquisite lover. You make me feel like Munch's _Madonna_." Recalling the sensual nude with her wavy, brown hair, ripe tits, full lips, I stifled a moan. Bella nipped my earlobe, "And your ass ain't bad either."

I marveled she had them all wrapped around her finger in one minute flat… me most of all.

We trailed behind the others, touching, sneaking a kiss here and there.

There was a gargantuan Quaker Oats sheet cake signed by one Betty Infinger like it was a work of fuckin' Marzipan art.

Bluebottle flies buzzed over the white frosting. Buzzing like my body that was itching to get closer to Bella. Skimming my hands up the back of her thighs, I made it almost as far as her ass before she pushed back into my boner then beguiled over her shoulder, "We better keep on walkin', baby, before I do something completely indecent."

Clothesline Art—Maw would've loved that—and a lanky, loose-gaited dude dressed in a t-shirt from Master Bait and Tackle Shop rounded out the attractions until we reached the Orangeburg Line Dancers.

The milieu of ungraceful, middle aged women—and one singular, homely man—were struttin' their stuff to nothing other than _Men in Black._ I felt the reflux of hysteria crawl up the back of my throat as nightmares of the vapid, villainous Volturi swam about me.

As if manifesting my worst night terrors, Bella took the bull by the horns. Unfortunately I wasn't talkin' about my bullhorn. "So, what's y'all's stories?"

Alice stepped up to plate, "Alice Brandon, Mississippi State Insane Hospital, 1927, sired by James, formerly of the Volturi and now destroyed. By my hands."

Jazz took his toothpick from his mouth, "Jasper Whitlock, Confederate Army Major, ma'am. Turned in 1863, the year of the Gettysburg Address, in Texas. About ten miles from my momma's doorstep, actually," he rubbed his eyes and the sadness evaporating off him clung to me like condensation. Bella inhaled and blinked rapidly, swallowed audibly. Turning towards my woman, he finished his tale, "Mad-bitch Maria made me what I am, made me the commanding officer of her army of newborns. I done some bad shit, Bella."

_Hadn't we all?_

She nodded and quietly looked towards her best friend.

Rose held her hand, but wouldn't look Bella in the eye, "Rochester, New York, 1933. My affianced, Royce," she sneered, her voice became hard as glass, "decided to gang bang me just before our society wedding," her words shattered Bella.

Embracing, rocking each other, Rose whispered, "Irina found me, turned me, flew me like an angel over the snowy city rooftops. She was my family for a very long time."

Holding Bella by her upper arms, she pushed her away, wiped the tears on my girl's face with the pads of her thumbs. Impersonating Mama Brown, she shored herself up, "Now, now, l'il momma, don't you feel bad for me! _Uh uh._ I found Mama, and I found you."

I gathered Bella and dried her face, tenderly pulling her tears away with my lips. Kissed the top of her head and wrapped her tight to me.

Bubba took up the gauntlet, "Yeah, don't feel sorry for neither. Shit, I was wrasslin' bears up in Alaska and got bested, simple as that. Just happened to be my lucky day Carl was way the fuck up there in no-man's land doing some kind of public service, volunteer surgeon type bullshit and happened across me. That was in 1935, and I ain't looked back since."

"Y'all got it down by rote," she said but I could see the sorrow in her eyes, the somberness pulling down her lips that should only ever curve upwards. "Rose, Em, Eddie you were turned out of necessity. But Alice, Jazz… _Jesus._ You were made into immortals so your progenitors could use you?"

We had nothin' to add to that. Biting her lips, mulling it over; I craved to know what Bella was thinking. _Did we scare her? Did she want to be like me? Did she still like me, us? Would I have her infinitely… could I ever… did I…?_

I knew what I wanted.

Bella wasn't done, and this was something I decidedly _didn't_ want to discuss, "And the Volturi's interest?"

"I can see the future," the Tainted Troubler stated.

"I play with emotions," and, holy shit if Jizz didn't demonstrate by laying a whole pile of lust on Bella! She started winding those hips right against me, her eyes dropped to dark, misty brown, and her heart sped so her breasts jilted out.

"Knock it off, Jazz," I liked my woman horny, but under my own tutelage.

Chagrined, he apologized, "Sorry, man."

Bella came to, "Hell, that was you?" Jazz looked a little proud. "Dang, that's some party trick."

"I can read minds," I added, because I was feeling slightly left out.

Bella rolled her eyes.

"Hey, I kick ass!" Bubs shouted.

Rose guaranteed, "I just take care of my own, Bella."

"What's this all got to do with me though?"

Sakes Alive Alice laid it all out, fair and square, "Past," she waved her arm towards all us older-than-thou immortals. "Omniscient present," she gestured to me. "Omnipotent future," the puny precognitive gestured to herself.

Stepping closer, she touched Bella and closed her eyes, "You, my dear, are the Protector."

Glassy, bright on opening, her orbs struggled away from Bella, "And these," she noted Rose and Bubba, "two formidable bodyguards."

"They want us…they want me and Eddie, anyway. Whether or not they know about Jazz and you yet, I can't tell. But when they hear of us, three couples in one family, well, we're the ultimate siren song to the Volturi."

"Whoa, back up a minute, protector?" Bella was taut.

I cut the Roaming Gnome off, "I told you, love. You're a shield. You know I can't see into your thoughts." She assented. "Right, and you know Arsehole and I share the same basic ability. _What if he can't read your mind either?_ That's his ultimate weapon. His WMD. He won't like the fact that you're one of our own."

"I'm one of your own?"

"Should be," Anomaly Alice connived.

"That's enough, Mischievous Malice."

"What, Eddie Teddy-boy?" Oh the fuck and no! She'd just referred to me as a toff, like butter wouldn't melt. Well, it wouldn't, but that was beside the point.

"Just shut it."

"I think Bella should know."

"Well then, pray tell, just what is your interest in me and Bella? We're not even-" Shit, I'd done it now, kicked off another fucking open forum discussion; and Bella was looking at me all quizzical-like with my stupid goddamn outburst because I'd been about to say, or admit, or lie, _"We're not even in love."_

"Simple. I have it on good authority," she rapped her addled pate and gained both mine and Bella's attention, "You'll change Bella -"

Bella cut in, "Oh, I've heard this story -"

The Pernicious Prattler interrupted, "And when you do, the Volturi are going to come for us."

"Then why the fuck are you gloating?" Encircling Bella, I brought her face to my chest, guarding her with my hands over her back. Making a barrier against Alice and any other blight out there.

Like a pallid pallbearer, the Pixie Plight pressed, "Aren't you sick of the waiting game?"

Peeking out from my shirt, piping up, Bella spoke clearly, "Hey there, this is no game to me, Alice."

For one moment, Alice looked less ruthless, more rueful, "I'm sorry, Bella. You're right; it's not a game at all."

_What the bloody hell?_ Had Alice just sort of, kind of, apologized? I looked around discreetly…_nope, no sign of the Apocalypse—no clouds of suffocating, plaguing locusts, just regulation South Cackee grasshoppers; the river was still murky, shitty tan, not running red with blood._ And yet, the world had gone slightly skewy.

Maybe Bella would be the one to get the truth out of the Mad Black-haired Hare.

"I kind of thought I'd just get my own life in order now, you know? Get on with my courses, my apprenticeship; take a year off from bullshit. No offense to y'all, but I haven't even thought about becoming one of the walking undead."

If I coulda' beat the snot right out of Alice just then, I would have.

Bella was strong and bright, and an 'I ain't taking no shit' type of woman, but right now she was trembling in my arms, part fury, part fear.

Jazz wafted some peace-love-in patchouli breeze around us.

Needing to lighten the mood, Bubba read my mind, _a-fuckin'-gain._ He tapped Bella's shoulder, "Sister, how's that new iPod workin' out for you? Dropped it in the john yet?"

Bella's trembles turned into those quaking gales of giggles that began in her tummy and worked up into throaty laughs.

Em kept on, knowing a good thing when he saw it, "Ya' know, next time just put it in the dryer. Maw's got a new one, I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

More courageous than I could ever be, Bella shuckled around until my hands were linked just below her tits. Her eyes glittered again, her lips smiled again… he might not be able to do the ESP asinine-shit like me, but Bubba knew I was thankful.

Sweet as pie—_damn, I wanted to get to her pussy pie, serve me up a nice slice of that and screw all this crap—_Bella winked, "Well, _brother_, since it's question time, I've got one for you. How's that opposable thumb thing working out for you? You feelin' okay with all the evolution stuff? Because you're lookin' a might peaked, and it _is_ all about survival of the fittest, right?"

Proving her point all on his own, Bubba lost his train of thought the second he was distracted by a beauty queen in an enormous, shiny silver gown, a glitter-and-glue plastic crown, and winning sash. _Bipedaling_ over to her, looking more and more like a chimp, Bubba got the goods on Miss 'Global' America. Seemed the pageant was about as _global_ as the _World_ Grits Festival insofar as it was merely nationwide.

We were all scratching our heads at that one.

With the heavy discussion over, we moved on. I scoffed at the advertised morning 'event' for Sunday: Worship at your church of choice. _As if that was going to happen._

I considered the Tilt-a-Whirl, just trying to figure out if the clapped-out thing could withstand many more rides because the fackin' thing had been around since the 80s at least. Some classic hardcore rock blared out of the sound system and the platform was painted with faded images from ZZ Top, Molly Hatchett, Guns N' Roses, even the _Grateful Dead—_I didn't know what the motherfucker there was to be grateful for.

Okay, maybe Bella's tits.

Figuring she'd probably need me to hold her jimbubblies if we went on the Tits-a-Whirl, I was getting ready to buy tickets when who should darken my doorstep just as I was feeling lighter and gettin' good and ready to feel Bella up?

None the fuck other than Jacob, the anthropomorphic animal with his gargantuan gang.

They fit right in, didn't they? Long straggly hair, bandannas, concert tees, tight acid wash jeans… the brace of strapping juvenile delinquents looked like they'd just stepped out of a Skid Row video**.**

Hackles raised, teeth bared, we traded a volley of vociferous snarls and growls while Bella stood between our two volatile factions.

I moved around Bella, shielding her from the shifty shifters, and considered killing the punk _just because_ when a light, female voice rang out, "Okay, _okay!_ Hang on Puck, pup, we're all here for Bella." _Puck, what the Cainwhore was with the flaming fairy shit? I wasn't no pukey little Puck._ Before I could get even more annoyed, the little woman started muttering to Bella, "Oh my goodness, he really _is_ pretty. I mean, you said he was _pretty, _but you didn't say he was capital 'P' Pretty."

_Pretty?_

Bella bit her lip at my growing aggravation, "I know, Leah, see? How on earth can I describe _that?_" She swept her hands down to my belt loops; I mutely pleaded with them to migrate just a little bit lower.

I was about to get Pissy with a capital 'P', and Bella _not_ slipping her palm down to my crotch wasn't helping.

_I'd fuckin' show 'em pretty._ Straightening and leaning over the tops of the two chick's heads, I was about to take a piss on my turf by knocking Jacob's beastie block off when once again I was halted by the teeny transmongrel, "Back the fuck up, bloodsuckers, brats."

Long straight jet hair about covered her petite frame, and though her voice was airy, there was no questioning the forceful command inside of it.

_Of all the gimcrackery, a goddamned she-wolf._

Maybe it was her feminine pheromones or something, but she didn't reek half as bad as the guys.

It appeared she too could read my mind because she grabbed Jacob's scruff, "Nah, they're just typical teens, trying to get them to shower is like trying to convince Charlie that Vitamin R is _not_ the equivalent of orange juice just because you drink it at 9 AM."

'_S'what I'd thought, they just suffered from B.O._

"Jacob, Bella, aren't you going to introduce us all?"

_Great, another Miss Manners._

_Bla bla bla, Sam, Jacob, Seth, and Leah, bla bla bla._

_Or more like Emily Post with a bad case of potty mouth_, "Can't take these fucking useless boys anywhere." She proceeded to cuff both Jacob and Seth—giving Maw a run for her money in that department—to their moans of 'Ow, Shit!' and 'Christ, Leah, so not necessary!' When she reached Sam, he just raised an eyebrow, and I caught a glimpse of the two of them throwing it down, _sans clothes. _So that's how it was with the pair.

When she made as if to smack me, I kinda' flinched. _Fuck_, well who knew? Maybe she wanted to rip my head off?

Bella, Bubba, Jazz, Alice and Rose all snickered.

Their Den Mother pushed Jacob forward, "Go on, Jake, tell 'im." He stumbled up to me on his size fucking-ridiculously-huge feet and mumbled, "So, yeah, we-could-probably-make-a-formidable-team-or-somethin'," talking to the ground.

I was tempted to borrow Em's ear-cleaning car key because I musta' been hearing things. Bella prodded me on, looking all optimistic and shit. I shrugged my shoulders and sneered, "Yeah, thanks, but I ain't into interspecies sports, _dingleberry dingo._"

Bella glared at me.

"What?"

"No need to start a cockfight, baby."

Leah sidled up to Bella, "You know, with that puffed up disposition, not to mention the _very_ pretty hair, he's more of a bantam rooster."

Bella agreed.

_What the shit? Fighting cock, yeah, fine. Bantamweight, no fuckin' way._ I could take that motherlovin' hounddog down with _both_ hands tied behind my back.

Of course, Bubba had to join the fun, adding his last two cents, "Yeah, featherweight."

_Et tu, fuckhead? Wasn't blood supposed to be thicker than…blood?_

Rose had to _weigh in_, both she and Alicewere markedly ogling a big linebacker-like boy wearing a USC Gamecocks jersey that read 'You can't lick our Cocks'.

Then there was Jizz, "FOGHORN LEGHORN!"

"Alright, assholes, I fuckin' draw the line at that."

Sam tipped the scales, "Eh, no grits no glory, right man?"

We fist bumped, and Jizz sniggered until I rounded on him, "Not another word out of you, _gloryhole_."

At the end of that fiasco, it was like they were all poker playin', drinkin' buddies… not our stinking, natural born enemies. Jacob's dad, medicine man Hill-Billy Black, came up with Charlie, and I felt even more cursed.

Now all I needed was a run-in with pencil dick hick Chester.

"Bella, please, can we get away from all this? I need to touch you," I ran my lips down from the inside of her elbow to her wrist, sucking lightly at her pulse, keeping it all virtuous because of the wolves and the dads and the kids and the crowds.

Practically carrying her away from anyone with super keen vision and eyesight—that naturally included her cockblocker of a father--I took her round back of the Ferris wheel just hoping to hell it wasn't about to keel over. In front of me, she watched the ride creak its way around and around, and I wound a length of her hair about my wrist before tugging her head back. I brushed her dress to the side of her shoulder, baring her collar bone and the hill of her breast. Bella whimpered a little when I dragged my forefinger across that carnal curve, dipping into her cleavage and tucking in to toy with her nipple.

Breathlessly she gasped, "Eddie, you're acting like a carnie."

Pulling her hair again until the back of her head rested on my shoulder, I nibbled over her jaw, "Can't help it, I'm fuckin' horny."

Fingertips slipped up her throat to cup her chin, delicately touching the little dimple and turning her head. Slowly, sleek, and full of moans, we kissed. Until an old man hobbling by on a cane exclaimed, "Go git her, boy!"

We broke apart to see his wife, blue-rinsed and poodle-permed, threaten him with her suitcase-sized purse, "William Henry, you mind your own dirty p's and q's!"

I put her bodice back in place, rolling her nipples a couple more times. Bella's smile was so sexy, so sublime, her eyes lusty and her lips parted, I figured we better get someplace more public before I had her in a cardboard ticket booth.

At the Pocahontas canoe ride, the ride jock was a burly, pierced, tattooed boatswain, definitely not a Whig of the _Tippecanoe and Tyler Too _variety. Bella watched with a wistful turn to her lips as he rounded up the kids and took their parents' money hand over fist all due to his fairground showmanship:

"_Now, folks, fellows, ladies, lads, and lasses! Don't make me look like a hammer-squash. Don't send me back to the bone yard before the day's done! Let's blow the genny off this joint before this carnival jumps the midway. This here's better'n the Flying Jinny over yonder and only costs a deuce!"_

The music crackled like it was being played on an old time gramophone, but Bella heard me, "What is it, love?"

"Nothing, baby. It's just fun to watch the kids." She looked up at me as I lounged over her, my hands furrowing in the folds of her dress at her unbelievable rear, "I never had this," she waved her hand around the littered fairgrounds where laughter, sweat, loud families, screaming tots boiled over, and for the first time I saw it through her eyes.

I pulled her closer, "I can take you anywhere you want to go, Bella."

She dug nearer to me, her fingers sliding into my back pockets.

"And I can definitely take you for a ride," I winked.

Admonishing me, she knew what I was thinking, "You can get that _pussy-eatin'_ grin off your face, Eddie."

I tapped my head, "Can't help it, pornographic memory."

She slipped her hands under my t-shirt and tickled my sex-hair before she gave it a good yank, "Yeah, but can you keep those thoughts to yourself?" She nodded to Jizz who was bent double at the lemonade stand in front of a black lady wearing a turquoise negligee tied up around her midriff like it was a shirt and she was Daisy Duke. Her potbelly looked swollen with malnourishment, and her panties were visible above the waist of her white jeans and all in all, my woody rapidly deflated.

I was further stonewalled by Major-what's-your-malfunction as he pounded his forehead to his arms, "Fuck man, ain't y'all already had enough?"

I scowled at him.

"Clearly not," he peeked over at us.

_The Jesus and Mary Chain._

I gave it one more shot, I was sore for Bella, "I really want you now, love." Plein-air, mid-fair, _fuck_, I might-could hump her in a jump castle**.** Having had her just that one weekend, my body craved her even more than before.

Streaming my hands down over the front of her dress, I crushed the yellow material against her mons and swept my fingers from side to side over her pussy.

Nudging her ass against my resurgent cock, Bella's sensuous-I'm-about-ready-to-let-you-bend-me-over voice wrapped around me in a balmy cloud, "_Mmm, _Eddie, you have such a pretty penis."

_Pretty? What the fuck with all the pretty?_

I forgot all about that when she carried on, "I love feeling you in my mouth, when you feed your cock to me, brushing your tip over my lips and sliding it against my tongue."

I was choking on desire.

_Goddamn!_

"We're leaving. Now."

Waving to her dad, Billy Black, the teen wolves, Bella sprinted next to me.

I heard my own calling after us:

Rose with a, "Oooh, that boy's got cat scratch fever!"

Jizzper hollered, "Y'all, don't get up to anything too scatological."

Bubba gave his usual, "Go spread your scat now, son."

Catcalls and wolf whistles echoed from the wiseacres, and the Wissago Witch ended it all with a castigating, "Better not mark up my flower borders next door at the single wide, Eddie." _Damn, she was more pent-up than a cat on a hot tin roof_.

I flipped them all off.

Bella leaped into my arms so I could run faster, she nicked my lip then pulled it into her mouth, laving it with her tongue, "You're an eager beaver, baby."

"Eager for your beaver," I clarified, squeezing her tush and watching her tits bounce.

We made it past Louise's Beauty Box, out of St. George—_The Town of Friendly People—_and into Dorchester whose motto was _The Little Town with the Big Heart_,before I pulled over, parked next to the railroad tracks, jerked up the steering column and watched in fascination as Bella unbuttoned the top of her dress, hauled up her skirts, and sank over my cock. I leaned back, swallowed by relief and desire. The fucking horn honking the entire time had Bella giggling until my face twisted with the ache and pleasure of being inside of her, filling her, and my thrusts up into her got harder.

Clamping down on my shoulders, she swirled over my dick and sighed, "_Oooh, yes, god, yes, Eddie."_

My sight blazed with red and white, with a rumble I grabbed her ass and held her down on me when we came, so fucking overwrought and tight we didn't breathe.

We got to Ranchero Swan a half hour later than planned.

I walked Bella to the door, she'd planned an evening at home with Constable Cunt.

"Chitlins Festival next?" she asked, an arch sparkle to her eyes.

"What say we miss that one out," sounded too much like chirrun, and probably stank to high hell. I straightened the wild rumples and rat's nests from her hair caused by hanging over the steering wheel when I'd pumped into her, "You know what I'm really longing for? A nice, long day in bed with you."

"Well that sounds mighty fine, baby." She plucked a few kisses from me.

"_BELLA! That you?"_ Charlie shouted from the front room.

_Fucking hell._ "When are you moving out again?"

She opened the door and I backed down the walkway.

"Hey, Eddie?"

"What is it, love?"

She looked at her sassy sandals, the ribbons strung up her calves bedraggled from their day of excitement, "Earlier, when you said to Alice, 'We're not even…' did you mean that?" She was flustered, "I mean, are we not…?"

_Oh, that._

Jumping back up to the porch, I cuddled her cheek with my palm and made her look at me, "I don't know, Bella. We just might be. _I think,_" I closed my eyes, opened them and hers widened in recognition, "I think… I could be." Kissing her forehead, nuzzling her widow's peak, I took my leave before I said anything else I wasn't prepared to talk about.

Serious, slightly startled, but lit up from within, Bella waved.

I knocked on the cab of the Bronco with one last look, "I'll call you later. Good night, love."

* * *

~Um, I don't even know what to tell you. Eddie and I are fucked. Leave a review, please!~

As I said, if you want the full stories on Alice and Rose and Mama Brown, as well some idea on the spooky, spoogy Volturi, check RWaC.

Things like Uley's and DC's garages nearly side-by-side on the drive up to St. George, 96.9 The Wolf -- that's all true.

Numerous ways to find Eddie: Twilighted Forums, Facebook, Twitter – all links on my profile in addition to more cool shit for the story (extra blinkies, artwork and a playlist too!).

I've been nominated as Best Author of the Year So Far at the Twilight All Human Fanfiction Awards!! Voting yet to be announced. twilightallhumanawards(DOT)webs(DOT)com

Noms are open for the Giggle Snort Awards until May 12th. C'mon, Eddie's funny, right? Or, you know, you can vote for an 'Edward' if you must ;). Gigglesnortawards(DOT)mmmboptastic(DOT)

Cheers, Rie and Eddie~


	21. Classics and Messy Pieces

Miss Vanessarae (now this is awesome…she actually changes up some of _my_ words to make sure I got Eddie's accent right…that's just how well she knows Dead Confeds), Miss Viola Cornuta, I do believe I am completely and thoroughly in love with you! I have such gratitude for your talents, for stickin' with me and Eddie, for puttin' up with my demands and general, all-around insanity.

Before this starts, I think I said this before, but y'all should be reading your fics in ½ view. Button at your top right.

**Disclaimer: **I know. The original characters don't belong to me, but this Southern tale and _these_ characters (and they fuckin' are characters all right), are MINE.

So, this is the Anniversary of Dead Confederates (well, yesterday, technically). I know! It's sheer madness, and silly, sexy shitnanigans. Huge love to those who have been with us since the beginning ('us' because me and the boys, we're a 'unit' of sorts, ha ha ha), and equal adoration to those who have just hopped on this CRAZY train!

This bastard (_No, Eddie, shhhh, hush now, baby, I'm not talkin' about you, just the chapter_) is dedicated, as always, to my DW h00rs over at Twilighted… because… they just ain't right in the head and there's no fuckin' way I could do this with out them. It's also written with a shout-out and loads of naughty stuff from Eddie to his really hardcore, fuck-hot fans over on Fuckbook—extra special sinful thoughts to y'all.

Congrats to Jewles622 on the birth of her baby!

Major heaps o'love to dedicated reviewers because y'all's input gives me so much food for thought… if you ever wonder if your review is important to a writer, yeah, it really is.

Huge gratitude to my sabertooth tigress, Viola Cornuta, for the extra special care with this and every chapter, as well as piles and piles and piles of emails and chats and literary info…seriously, the woman is a gaddamn goldmine and this chapter would have been half as much without her!

Thanks to a Brit named Nelly who inspired the Doges Palace bit, c/o my Gayle King (and many more endless phonecalls and frighteningly funny conversations, and love—you know—to you).

ENORMOUS A/N at the bottom filled with delicious morsels to feast your fandom on.

~~Put Some South in Your Mouth, y'all~~

* * *

**Classics and Messy Pieces**

_**~A Tale of One Pretty Clitty~**_

It was a foggy-bottom night with lush heat-lightning flashing in brazen streaks across the sky. The gut-deep rumble of thunder wrestled with the cloud cover, lifting up cadaverous edges to curlicues and spitting them out. I felt it in my stomach, in my balls, in the balls of my feet, curling my toes, wetting my lips… _Bella was near._ Bella was here. Echoing the parched thrum of my purr, another _boom_ of carnivorous thunder shook the tilting porch as I quietly opened the door to Swan's domicile and latched the lock back in place.

I hadn't thought I'd get to see Bella until tomorrow; after all, she was spending her post-grad evenin' with mirthless Chuckles. Good goddamn thing she'd called me fifteen minutes ago because I'd been gettin' ready to pull out my old stalker moves.

Pickwick Papers Poppa had finally fuckin' put down the Charleston Post and Courier—the shit newspaper, _Pussy and Cuntier,_ owned by the Manigault family—and made way to his bed to rest his head, weary from holding up the handlebars of his mustache all damn day long.

Stepping into the dark impasse of Bella's house, I followed her fragrance to the kitchen where one fluorescent light tickled the shadows from their hiding places with a _ buzz-glow-buzz_. The flickering flare lifted within her presence alone, and the welcoming smile on her lovely lips. Reaching into the rusting Frigidaire, its own bulb long gone, Bella took out two beers, popped the tops and held one out to me. I grabbed her mouth for a scandalously deep, wet kiss and took the brew she proffered.

Standing at opposite sides of the paltry little shit-hole kitchen, the warped cupboards and scratched screens on the windows and the rubbed-bare lino didn't intrude on our silent, private moment.

I bit my lip and she licked hers.

I motioned her to me, and she lifted a shoulder, trying not to grin.

We both swallowed more beer, enjoying the silence that enveloped us closer than a naked embrace.

Hunting to her, I whispered up her neck, the cool bottle of my beer at her nape, the cold hold of my hand trailing up her ribs to the side of her breast, "You wanna' fuck?"

Bella sucked in a breath and turned her face against mine, sliding her cheek along my jaw, sucking the cleft in my chin, "Might-could."

Our mouths shared breath but remained apart. Giggling, she titled her head back and glugged the last inches from her PBR so her neck stretched, and I plastered it with icy, open-mouthed kisses.

Turning away, she rinsed out the receptacle and set it on the warshboard.

Color had risen in her face; the pinwheel hues of her eyes had darkened and merged.

Her nipples had peaked.

I wondered if she was wearing any panties.

Sidling away, she held her fingertip to her mouth, coquettishly wetting the tip and placating, _"Shhhh,"_ before beckoning me with that moistened digit I wanted paddling down to my dick.

Holding the bottle aloft, outward, as if it were a candle, as if I needed its dancing illumination to make sense of the broken-down tumble of clutter that met my every move. I could see perfectly fine in the dark. Bringing the pale lager to my mouth, I knocked it back again. The fluid was warmer than me, tepid even, but it ramped me up and numbed me down. Cringing inwardly, I crept behind Bella through her disorderly home.

Bella had brought _me_ home.

Her house was spick and span as she could make it, and I hated the idea of her cleaning up after any man. No amount of tidying and upkeep would make a dent in Sheriff Swine's packrat tendencies—_I could give her everything._

_Or nothin'._

_Or death._

I didn't like the direction my mind was taking. A protective anger made me want to safeguard Bella from everyone, yet the Petite Pillaging Pirate had made it clear as mud that Bella was meant to be _my_ defender.

That just didn't sit right. Not at all.

Bella started up the stairs, her delicate luminosity more fragile than a luna moth's wings. _This woman should never have to be my guardian angel._

Her shoulder blades worked beneath her shirt, like fragile forms taking flight.

I shook my head; everything about Bella was stronger, braver, more courageous than any woman or vampiress I'd ever met.

I drank and looked at her ass above me, its plump handhold captivating me out of my crusty, cursive thoughts.

Midway up, I stopped her with a hand curled around her waist, sweeping down to the tautness inside of her hipbones, "Where's your dad?"

The bare wooden steps whined as she stapled my hand to her tummy and pivoted to purse my mouth closed, "I done told you already, Eddie, _shhhh._" Giggling, Bella made forward again while I careened beneath the muggy mist of her touch.

Her bare feet slapped, she padded up, her threadbare t-shirt was razzed with runs of threads all over her chest, and never mind wondering about her panties, she obviously wasn't wearing a bra.

When I jumped up beside her, the sweet tip of one of her nipples goddamn winked at me through her Bull's Bay Taxidermy t-shirt that had seen better days.

"What?" I asked of Bella's startled expression, negligently holding my bottle between my thumb and forefinger, cornering her on the ricky-racky, tacky first-floor landing.

"_Hush up now_," she scolded. But her breath silted, her hips tilted, her tits toppled to me.

"Bella," stern and masterful, I pushed against her, tore off my shirt, and looked her in the eye as I sampled two fingers against her sex, earning a nice little low-down moan.

The air crackled like a hazy, green aura in advance of a lowcountry thunderstorm. Bella pulsed into the bowl I made of my palm.

I couldn't let up… I never would. Ripping a craggy hole into her shirt right over her nipple, I hovered and then sucked, licked, tucked, lathed, "Love, when are you moving?"

Puff Daddy was snoring away, one door down, interrupting my fantasies of fucking against the spindles and maybe breaking a handful of railing so splinters rained over us in the self-same shower storming outside.

I sheared her shirt until it hung off her in limp ribbons, flattering streamers working all over her tits and nipples like tickertape.

With the succulent underside of her breast a line I followed with my nose, then my tongue, on up to the top of the hill, I looked up and wanted to know, "Why not move in with me?"

Pushing her bosom together, Bella held me in the inferno of her delicious clamp. "What?"

Inside of her tits, I mumbled while my fingers tiptoed up and down her stomach, stopping below her bellowing boobs and above her clitoris, "I wouldn't ever leave the toilet seat up."

Bella wrangled me up to where she wanted me, right smack on top of her bud. I smacked it with my tongue, and she wriggled.

I jerked her to me, hopeful.

She sighed against my onslaught, "You don't need to pee. So that don't matter."

_Shit._

"You could walk around nekkid, and it wouldn't bother me," I offered.

"_Pffft._ I already figured that, baby."

Reaching down into her sweats, I tangled two fingers in a braid and branded her sex, then swept my pinkie over her ass, "I'll put the toilet paper right-side-up, _I'll walk around naked._" Bella looked up at that and swirled her pussy deliriously over my fingers. "I won't use your hairbrush," I added.

Though her eyes were tamped-down, avid, and umber she still had the wherewithal to comeback, "Who are you kiddin'? Do you even own a comb?"

Sensually, she pushed my hair off my forehead and snuck me down to her face, "I couldn't possibly live in sin, baby."

_Wicked woman._

Was she talkin' about wedlock now? I closed my eyes and threw my hands over her head, knocking some cracked plaster from the walls. "Huh?"

Scritchin' against my abdomen and slicing her hands up my chest, palpating my paps, she laughed, "I'm just jokin', Eddie."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then wondered if maybe I wasn't marriage material after all?

And fuck me like a Girl Scout—I was on my way to getting' my Vadge Badge.

Badgering me to the opposite corner of the stairwell, Bella sneaked with her hands, her rapturous words, "But where would I do my taxidermy at the double wide?"

_Right. Good point. I was fairly sure her hands would be otherwise engaged, permanently, on my cock._

_Oh hell on a hot day_, of course she read my mind, "That's what I thought; you don't plan on lettin' me do anything other than playin' with your own tool." Bella took to me, weaving our fingers, "And you know what? I haven't even been formally introduced to M'Esme or Carl."

_Cunt-ass Christ and enough with the etiquette shit already._

I tucked the collar of my shirt into my back pocket and left it danglin', "You wanna meet them?"

Her voice was husky as she ran her fingers over my chest, pinched my nipples, followed the ruts of muscle along my ribs, "Yeah, I do."

Scorching fucking hot, she slipped lower to twirl a finger around my belly button, and even lower to tug on my coarse hair, _lower_ so her palm pushed my stomach and her fingertips topsided and twisted into my springy pubes. My muscles flexed, and I plaited her tresses around my forearm, "Little bit lower, love, and I'll agree to anything."

A sinful glint sparkled in her eyes when she nipped my lips like a hungry stray kitten, "Damn right you will."

Launching herself at me, she coiled and curled, and I grabbed and touched: tit, hips, ass. Cleft, cunt, cock, nipples. Throats gilded back, groaning.

"_Sshhh."_

Inside and around and kisses spinning way the fuck out of control and two hands on my dick, tripping me up so I nearly fell down the steep stairwell. We were crocheted together like the fine-gauge wire of shrimp netting. _"Mmmm, yes, baby."_

I propelled her just far enough away that I could get my fingers back inside of her.

Sucking in a breath that barely reached her lungs before gusting back out, Bella hissed, bit my lips and then pulled them into her mouth, tonguing the slick coolness inside. She stopped undulating her pussy long enough to mutter, "We're gonna get busted, Eddie."

"No chance," I made a pilgrimage over her waist and brought her closer, "super-human hearing, remember?"

Her raspy laughter made her breasts bounce against me, hitting me just fuckin' so, tickling me, "You sayin' you're thinkin' about my _dad_ while you're trying to get in my pants?"

Her amusement was abruptly derailed as I anchored one hand under her ass and destroyed her sweats, "Ain't no laughing matter, Miss Swan." Waving a knuckle over her clitoris, I watched her hanging on to the banister for dear life, "And it appears I'm already _in your pants._"

One-handed, I unzipped my fly, my belt open, buckle clangin' but not loud enough to waken Sleepy-Dopey-Grumpy. Bella's sweet-as-peaches ass gripped in my hands, I listened to her mewl, "_Now._"

Turning her around, spreading her legs and lifting her to the step above me, I smoked my length against her pussy… that pretty swollen flesh luring me in. A hand to the middle of her spine, the other raising the globe of her derriere, I swaggered into her lax, open mouth, "Bend over and hold on."

Bella grappled the beveled newel post like it was a hitching fence while I tethered her to me with a fist in her hair. Sliding slowly inside was the sweetest, most demented torture. Keeping up my lazy, drawlin' pace was even more acutely arousing. My face felt crushed beneath the impact of her hot, tight, unearthly clenching and releasing.

Long, deep, slow, I rode her from behind.

I had her hips, swiveling like a kaleidoscope, between my hands, and I felt every bone in her body, and I knew how easily I could _snap_ her.

Blood rushed up and sent a richer infusion to her flesh, especially where I palmed and rubbed her ass—its red-pink coloration a thing I couldn't quantify accurately.

I quaffed her lips still thrusting in, _to hold_, pulling out, _to stop_.

My cock was beating with poison, like the fangs of a green mamba filling. _Biting, sucking, goddamn fuckin'._

_Not. Killing._

I liked watching the swathe of my dick parting her pussy, seeing the way her silken lips tried to suck me back in as I departed her.

Bella snapped back, adder-like, "Eddie, _Jesus_! Faster!"

Grunting, shaking, I gave her harder, I gave her faster. "You feel that?" Her head hung low and whipped up and down.

My dick was goddamn thick and so rigid and ready to burst… inside, Bella was all heat and liquid and constriction**, **"Baby," she stopped to moan, "_Hmmm. Oh, god."_ The roll of an orgasm was already simpering up and down my cock from her wavy insides. "So hard, sooooo, _ohmygodEddie._" I pulled her smack down onto my pelvis and snarled and thrust up into her. "Christ, baby, how long," she howled, "Oh good God, _mmmm,_ how long can you -" The force of my next lunge silenced her.

A definite surge of moistness dampened me.

Hoarding my mouth in between hisses, she wept, "_So long, oh baby-baby-baby-please-honey-fuck."_

And I knew she was ready because she never cursed.

"_Ahhhh._ Fuck!" Bella's forehead pounded the wall, her fingers troved back and grabbed my ass, her thighs quivered, and she was up on her tiptoes, biting bloodiness into her lips, mashing back her hips, "OHMYGOODGOD! _Uhhhhh, GOD!" _Her body stopped, even her hummingbird heart stilled-_like it would-_momentarily.

"You want this?" Pushing her leg up with my own to the next step so she was wide open, I planted my feet, quirked my head and arrowed my eyes when she looked back over her shoulder. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Her silence was rich with want. A hand on her tit and one wrapped around her waspy waist, holding her forcibly in place, her ass, her shapely back, her neck rippled, and my fingertips on her clit, pinching and pulling… _she jumped and shouted._

Charlie goddamn leapt from his bed and found his pistol.

I heard it all and found his thoughts while I fought back my climax: _Dangnabbit, heard that fuckin' waxwork boy with his sweaty sheen or some such. Knew he was spreadin' his scat. Little bastard better not be in mah house._

I threw a hand over Bella's mouth, and she clenched even tighter around me. _Damn_ I was gonna' blow my wad, blow our cover, probably goddamn annihilate the stairs, and I was pretty damn sure Sheriff _Sum_bitch wasn't gonna' like that at all.

I pulled my dick _achingly_ from her pussy and soared to her room. Beneath the coverlet, I hauled her astride me, on top of me, and took up residence in her velvet delta again, smothering her lips with my mouth and begging her to hold still as I gently shifted in and out of her. "Your daddy's coming, but not before me." That was enough to make her lash her head up, berth down onto me, and ride me quick, fast, and hard.

"Oh shit!" I tried to whisper because his thumping footsteps were getting closer, but, _hell_, so was I. "Bella, what are you?" And I stopped because she draped a finger in my mouth and did some fuckin' savage, primal dance all over me with her body a wild, meandering masterpiece wrenching my cum right out of me! I cranked back and spiraled up and just as the last drops of toxin erupted into her, Bella shoved me out of her bed, and I rolled underneath.

Daddy O' Dickhead had a fuckin' industrial-sized mag-lite trained on Bella's bed as soon as he busted the door open. The cone of light glared around the room, and I could feel it settling on Bella above me. I knew the minute he saw her because his feet shuffled back over the threshold. Injuriously, Bella sat up, the bed springs pinging just over my face as I held my breath, "DAD! Jesus! Can't a girl have any privacy?"

"Christ, Bella." He uttered, floundered, blustered and backed away, "Um, okay. Yeah, sorry. You just continue with what you were doin', I guess?"

In the dark, amongst the dust bunnies, I still had enough presence of mind to look around for Bella's new gash-gadgets… wonderin' if there were any other 'rabbits' under here with me.

I smirked and silently applauded my gal.

She flounced back on the mattress and I began to crawl out when the door creaked open again, "Just so we're clear. He ain't in here, is he?"

The sound of a book hitting wood dented the dense thickness of the night, "Out. Now."

I was against her in a moment, cleanin' up my mess with my fingertips, "Well played, Miss Swan."

Wreathing her lips with my essence, I watched her lick, clean. A bit pissed nonetheless, she chomped down on the pad of my middle finger, "Well, I never. You coulda' just waited, but instead I had to make it look like he caught me masturbating. You _are_ a piece of work, Eddie."

"Funny, I was going to say the same about you," I was talkin' to her tits, and they asked me to suck them. _Who was I to say 'no'?_ A swollen tip in my mouth, I enjoyed her sighs, moans. I laughed as she slapped my hands away only to yank me closer, by my ears.

Later, in her sleep, she talked a blue streak. I spent the time idly touching her but not so much to wake her. I chuckled when she said, _"Holy Jesus and little baby chicks, I'm gonna' make a sculpture of your sexy prick, honey… oh damn hell and hot… ain't nuthin' like it."_

We-ell, damn straight I'd sit for that sculpture.

Through the night, I was turgid. But not rigid. I was tireless, but relaxed.

At dawn, we were east of Eden. Apples rose in her cheeks with the morning's slumberous flush.

Just as her breathing began to accelerate, a shrill warbler sat right outside her window and burped out an endless stream of ear-splitting bird song. Fucker better not have taken a shit on mah Bronco.

I wanted to _kill _the screeching mockingbird—it interrupted my plans for first-thing-in-the-morning sex (and considerin' I didn't have _morning wood,_ but all the cunt-whore day wood, I was a might bit irritated)—and woke up Daddy Dungheap.

I couldn't stay because the fuckin' dad to end all dads had some damn precognitive premonition shit to rival my own where I was concerned, the patriarchal, human ball-buster had my paranormal prick on his po-lice radar.

Leaving with a desperate kiss, knowing I'd see her at Luxury Hollows mid-mornin', I beat feet ahead of Sherlock Homey out the window. Not before I caught Bella in a hug. Sometime in the night she'd requisitioned my 't'. "Keep it, love, it looks good on you," I caressed.

I drove home like a good southern boy, bare-chested and with the windows rolled down, pretty fuckin' pleased with mahself.

_**~The Merchants of Menace~**_

"Give it some elbow grease, sonny."

"Yeah, put your back into it."

"Like that?"

"Harder, boy!"

"Hand me that wrench, braw."

"Fuck that, pussy, use your demon-given brawn."

"Fuckin' hell, are you sweatin'?"

"Nah, man, _glistenin'._ Just got me a spritzer from the Wal-Mart."

"Jesus Cuntin' Christ."

"Fuck off, hoe-diddly. You're the one that has me out here in the hot sun because you had to bust your damn Bronco, Boss Hogg."

"What'd he do now?"

"Nothin' you need to know about, Daisy."

"Rosco P. Cocktrain here smashed out his roof and fucked up his aerial when he was lettin' Bella ride him rodeo-style on the way back from the Grits Fest."

"Oh, that's friggin' classic, Duke."

"_Shut it, _Bo-mo. Makin' love to Bella's a _hazard _to my surroundin's. It's either trash shit or kill her, you know?"

"Listen to you, _makin' love._"

"I think it's sweet."

"Brown-noser."

"Girl Scout."

"Least I ain't shacked up with the Batty Bratty Brownie."

It only took five seconds for our banter to devolve into one big brawl of baked-hard dirt clumps, arms lockin', fists booming, boots belting, churnin' up a dust-bowl tornado of limbs trying to wrestle each other to smithereens.

Just good ol' boys.

We'd been shootin' the shit and repairing my Bronco and upgrading the CB and antenna—just another way to waste time before Bella arrived for our day of sex and solitude.

_Just_ downhome boys and our toys.

_Toys_.

Good goddamn thing I hadn't found Bella's new stash under her bed last night.

Amidst the feints and insults and razzes and beatin's that didn't really hurt, I missed her like an amputee aching after a ghost limb.

Dusting off, I stood apart and rubbed my hand over the hole in my chest, the figurative and literal gap Bella filled with her sublime presence and highlighted with her absence.

Jazz and Em broke apart, grinnin' at me like the cocksuckers at least one of them had been, in days gone by. "What?" I scorned, kickin' a Busch can across the yard and lobbin' it straight to the relative of that annoying-as-fuck mockingbird who'd messed with my mornin' sexing.

Picking himself off the cratered soil, Junior dug around in his back pocket for a fresh toothpick, which he twirled between his lips, "Nothin'. You're just lookin' all _more-ish._"

I scratched my neck and hissed at a skeeter, "Huh?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong, Brother, I still think you're a moron." He winked at me. "But you're less moody and broody, you seem like you're _happy,_ and you want _more._"

_More._

Yeah, I did, I wanted more.

I wanted more, and now, and forever with Bella.

Like Othello, the Venetian General, I was worried anything could happen to her… not the least at my own hands.

Boorish.

_Moorish._

That Moor had killed his lover and then committed suicide with the realization of his wrongdoing.

Not that it was ever right to slay a lady.

Unless it was Jane. Or Chelsea. Or any other Volturi broad.

The only way I could make sure Bella was safe was to change her. But that would only bring down more attention from the Merchants of Menace, the Volturi.

It was a goddamn Catch-22.

Reaching into the open back of the Bronco, I dug around the Styrofoam cooler for a few brewskies, throwing one to Bubba and Jizz, fizzing another open myself.

Seemingly trained to my thoughts, Bub asked, "You really think them Eye-talians are gonna' come here?"

Crossing my arms, squinting my eyes, I took a bead on a turkey vulture overhead, circling, tightening its spiral, lowering to the ground, seeking out roadkill and carrion. "Seems that way."

I fingered Bella's panties in my pocket like they were a talisman and looked around at my brethren.

Sniggering, Em joked, "Good, I fuckin' welcome them. _All the world's a stage and I am but a playa'."_ He finished his beer and aimed it at the blue recycling bin with precision. "Besides, y'all, their cloaks are almost like Snuggies—they're gonna' look goddamn ridiculous in these here parts."

He was one to talk.

_Carl could quote Shakesqueer. Fuck, he'd been there at the Globe theatre, watchin' that shit en rondo._

Jizz interrupted my thoughts by shootin' a miniature paper airplane at me. A business card that read _The American Shakespeare Center, _in Staunton, Vagina_._ Phone number? 1-877-Much-Ado.

I stifled a chuckle and huddled back into my thoughts.

Bella was just… _all kinds of beautiful, _the likes of which I'd never appreciated, least not since Maw'd dragged us into the sissy, sibilant, shushed Sistine Chapel with its Michelangelo ceiling. Intricate, arched, iconic…God giving life to Adam through a touch of his fingertip.

I could only give death, in a simile of life that never ended. And not with heraldic touch, but with my teeth, sinking in, splitting her, spilling Bella's blood.

Criss-crossed, star-crossed, never before cosseted, always true _and_ coquettish, _Bella deserved more than just this one life._

She was bigger than death.

_Always_, the fact I couldn't read her mind was infuriating, insufferable, goading me, galling me. At the same damn time, it was a liberating, blissful _silence._ She said what she thought, and meant what she said… and all the time I just wanted to please her.

_Make her and mark her and have her._

_And hold her._

_Until her mortal demise could no longer do us part._

Somethin' had sparked up in me. I didn't ever believe Bella could be my undoing, _she was my Renaissance._

In the face of the twenty-first century's credo _Anything Goes_, I liked Bella's candor. Within her openness, her frankness, her fuckin' undimmed sensuality, I felt resurgence. Maybe even an awakening of my turn-of-the-last-century mores. There was no friggin' way I'd be beddin' down any more ladies… _no way, no how._ She was it.

And her rosebud lips on my dick didn't hurt either.

Jazz strolled closer, struttin' in his boots, hangin' down his Stetson, "Yeaah, there's much ado about somethin' goin' on."

Like Iago, Jazz was battle-ready, tried and true and gray and blue… a Confederate through and through, "Y'all need to tell me what happened in Volterra."

Bubba snorted like The Pig and snatched another beer, "Them glorified parasitic politicians just wanted a piece of Eddie."

"Yeah, Aro's little livery head couldn't handle the fact I knew more'n him." I checked my watch, looked down the road, wanting Bella nearer, now.

"Oh, man, I'da liked to unleash a can of whoop on candy-ass Caius that day."

A grim smile was on my lips, "And he'd have liked to unleash on your ass too, Bubba."

"Fuck. That's gross. No offense, other-fucker," he wrapped his paw around Jizz's shoulder.

"None taken. I don't find you the least bit attractive at any rate," Jizzper replied.

I pointed out, "It's not the dick-drabblin'-dragon-breath-demon I'm worried about anyway. It's Arsehole Aro we need to concentrate on."

"Well, spit a nickel with mah pickle, we should just call Critter Control."

"What?"

Jizz concurred, "Fuck yes, they're supposed to take care of unwanted varmint."

I hung my head low and let out a laugh… idiots knew we were in for a battle, and they cared, but more importantly, _this was us._

"What'd Maw do at the Castle?" Junior needled.

"Well, she weren't at all happy 'bout the way them vacuous vamps were treatin' Eddie so she took her stiletto and stamped on Armpit's toe, scuffing up his couture, cuntnugget boots."

I nodded, and added, "Then she made us go sightseeing."

"Oh yeah," Bubba laughed, "Like an army of acrimony was gonna' mess with her holiday. Remember that twat at the Doges Palace?"

_Doges, dogs… Jacob… Jacobite… bite… Bella._

Bubba snapped his fingers in front of my face, "Yeah, he'd stopped right damn in front of me, blockin' the exit. _Europenis_—what an ass. I said sorry and made nice, but I really did mean to head-butt the twat, _damn tourists_. They were like fiddler crabs, scuttlin' all about the place, just askin' to be squashed."

"You just wanted to get to that statue… what was it?"

I came out of my trance of Bella dancing with death. Remembering our crusade, our vacation, the slaughterhouse of the Volturi… their capsule of cruelty and ill-imagined glory. Journeying through time,I remembered, "Juliet's statue in Verona."

She'd been tarnished as me. A tall sculpture, an edict. Heavy, glossy green leaves leavened her shoulders.

_For luck, in love._

Green as me, back then.

And now.

"So, let me get this straight," Jazz began.

Bubba interrupted, "He said _straight._"

I rolled my eyes and gave Jazz the busted-up, tractor-ridden court with my hand, bowing and motioning him to carry on.

He spat his toothpick so it bayoneted the earth. "Aro knows all with a touch, Caius is just queer as folk, and Chelsea's a tramp who can cut your heartstrings?"

"Yep, sounds about right."

"Fuck that bullshit, what about Bella?" Em put the finishing touches on my aerial and looked me over with more smarts than I cared to understand.

I tore up an ant mound and pressed the scallions of little biting bast-herds back to guts, "Well now, she started with a pinching, piercing sting." I clapped my hand over my heart again, feeling Bella residing there… devoted. "A bite that swelled outward. Radiating. Fillin' with the pus of love."

They were silent, for once, those jesters. Waiting for more.

"Fuck you. I ain't sayin' it to y'all before I tell her."

"Christ, Eddie, don't go all soft on us or nothin'." Bubba smiled and shied away.

Jizz grinned like a proud man.

And then came closer, "What about the Sheriff of Effingham?"

"Well, I don't fuckin' know. _Hell_, I don't even know what Bella wants." I closed up the Bronco and took a look at my Timex again, "She's just a young woman. We haven't even hardly talked about the future."

Clapping a hand to my shoulder, Jizz gave way, "And it ain't even just about you."

_Everyone was counting on us._

This was no love story.

At best, it would end broken, gory.

While Jizz and I talked, Bubba pushed out the grill. He was wearing a custom-made '_Kiss Me, I'm Dead'_ apron he'd picked up at the World's Grits Festival.

"What're you doin?"

"Makin' Bella some dogs, obviously," he fired her up and placed a brace of wieners on the grate.

Just as the scent of fried hot dog was making me nauseous, I remembered, "Junior, thought you were goin' to the Hunley celebration." _I needed him to go… get at least one of them out of the way of my honey celebration._

The CSS Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, just off Charleston's coast in 1864, one year after Jizz had been made the Major of uncongenial Maria's army.

"Nah, I wouldn't miss this theatre for the world." He shook with laughter and looked down the drive.

Bubba peered up from his grillin' of chitlins. "The little women are here."

I followed their specs.

_What__… The… Hell._

Now this, right here, was a farce.

_**~It was the best of times, it was the worst of times~**_

Alice had done gone and collected Bella.

_Motherfuck._

While the girls alighted, I wanted to know, "What the fuck color is her dress?"

Bubba rolled his eyes, "You and your damn doodie-nomoly, it's pink, dude. Gladiola pink."

Feasting my eyes over the flittery, fluttery confection that left a fair bit of daring boob bare, I couldn't believe that even the goliath gladiator was gettin' in on Maw's plant-talk.

The harsh sun made a transparency of her skirt so I could see the turn of her curvy legs as Bella sauntered to me, Hecate the Hijacker in tow. Closing my eyes the moment I felt Bella glide up against me, I caught her to me, tenderly cradling her rear and turning us around so my body screened us from the others. "Hi."

"Hi."

Slowly so my arousal bubbled instead of boiled, she kissed me from one side of my lips to the other before assuaging the need of four hours without her in a luscious meeting of tongues sinuating.

The Witchy Woman stepped up to us with her _double, double, toil and trouble_, her voice throwing a bucket of water on my _fire burn and cauldron bubble, _"Enough of the groping, Eddie. It's girl time."

I swear she had her frigging broomstick shoved up her ass, sideways. My brow furrowed, I looked to Bella in disbelief, "_Girl_ time?"

Stroking my chest and slappin' my cheek lightly, Bella laughed, "Sorry, lover. Me and Alice need to chat… I won't be far."

They needed to _chat_. I needed to fuck! Crock of shit, this was. And they didn't need to talk, not without me present—who the hell knew what kind of mad crap the Mississippi Mudslinger was going to throw around? Bad enough she'd already told Bella she was gonna' be the end all or be all of our family.

"I don't think -" a finger pressed to my mouth and I looked down at Bella, from this angle I could see clear down between her breasts to her belly button. I forgot what the fuck I was fuming about.

A half-smile turned up her mouth, "Distracted, baby?"

I nodded my head, both of them.

"Good, you just remember that view for later." And off she ambled, next to the Foul Weather Fairy.

Jazz clapped a hand to my shoulder, "Oh, Eddie, you were _played._"

I shook my head, grinned, and directed the boys to get out the lawn chairs so we could set up as near to the double wide as possible so I could get an earful, yet close enough to the dirt road that we could keep an eye on the Sunday morning matinee ritual rutting between one M'sieur Louisiana and his 'cross-the-road neighbour Mr. Texas.

Fire-ant Alice didn't pull any punches, "I just wanted to say, Bella, that Eddie was a real asshole when I first met him."

I was about to jump up to defend myself when Bella interrupted, thank fuck. "Yeah, he was kind of an asshole when I met him, too."

_Or maybe not._

Alice outright laughed, and the boys smothered their chuckles while I shredded the vinyl webbing of my cheap-as-shit chair. The Pixie Stick got serious, "I think you've changed him."

"Nah, I don't believe that. He's the same man, or vampire, he was then. It's just that he's _more_ of who he could be. You know?"

_More_.

I smiled, that almost made sense.

"Well, the thing is, Bella, you're special. You seem to have been born to be with Eddie, to be the fulcrum of this spectacularly fucked-up family," Alice explained.

_We-ell, shit-almighty._

"You don't have to tell me y'all are the epitome of a dysfunctional nuclear family," Bella agreed. "But I don't understand how this can be? I'm just a girl. Eddie and me, we might be-"

Everyone held their breath, and I looked at the ground. I didn't want her to say it, not aloud to Alice, not the first time.

I heard her inhale from inside the trailer, "We have deep feelings for each other,"—Jazz muttered, "Nonsense." Bubba gave me a lingering look, I massaged my chest again, over that growing morass—"but how can I be that important in the grand scheme of things? I'm only human, I don't have super-anything, and, to be honest, I know any one of y'all could kill me with a flick of your fingers, if'n you really wanted to."

My eyes clamped shut. _Never._

Just then the Untamed Shrew hollered out the front window, "You boys better not have your listening ears on!"

"No'm!" Bubba denied.

We started fuckin' around to throw her off the scent of our eavesdroppin':

"So we done discussed Cacky, right?"

I sighed heavily, knowing where this was going to end up, "Yes."

"How 'bout that Dasher then?"

Bubba laughed his fool head off, "You fucked a dame called Dasher?"

"Can it, you cunt," I crushed my beer can against his titanium-plated skull, then admitted, "Worst fuckin' lay of my life. What the shit? Dasher? Jesus, that's one of Santa's reindeer. And hell if she didn't squeal-scream-whinny like a doe about to be rawhide when she orgasmed. 'Bout near made me want to rip my ears off my head, that shit did."

Jizz scoffed, "Did you have her sisters too? Prancer, Dancer…"

"VIXEN!" the dumbass duo exclaimed together.

_Dickheads._

"Shut up, they're gettin' to the good bit," Bubs tilted his head towards our home.

I picked up Bella's voice, low and throaty, "In fact, you know, I think Eddie wanted to kill me in the beginning."

"Of course he did. Do you honestly have no idea what your blood feels like to him? _Feels like_, because it's not inside of you, it's throughout you, it colors your skin, it feeds your heart, it perfumes the air; it _is_ a corporeal presence. Did you know we have strong olfactory senses? That a drop of blood from a tiny cut a mile away is discernable. That tiny red bead is a bubble of fragrance, of mouth-watering richness… that each person has their own flavour?"

I hated to admit it, but Alice was makin' me hungry just talkin' about it.

"Your blood has body. It holds the essence of you. I'm not a scholar or anything, not like Carl, but I've done my research. From what I've found along the way, it seems there are only two paths for a vampire and his _cantante_. The call is so imperative, coercive, one can either give in to the siren song and satiate the thirst that only grows with each second… or one can reach deep inside for unheard of strength, overpower the meaty, warm, luxurious melody to _drink and drink fast_ to discover, instead, what can only be named as enduring, undying love."

Outside, on my lawn chair, I stilled. And pulled up the hem of my shirt to wipe my face; there was no sweat, no tears, just the want for those things.

Want.

_Love._

Was that why? With Bella, and now, way the fuck down here in East Bum Fuck, South Carolina?

Bella gasped, and I could hear her heart struggling, and I did smell the fresh waves of aroma sent out from that organ _pumping._ And it _did_ make me lick my lips and breathe severely, and look towards where I knew she sat on my couch…but it was because I wanted to save it, _save her._

"The road less travelled," Bella whispered.

"Exactly," Alice agreed. "You see? I believe I was my sire's singer. That James went off the rails, exiled himself from his high-standing within the Volturi, because he couldn't escape my compelling bewitchment."

Jazz leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, listenin' to his woman.

"Unlike Eddie, he didn't come to me as a lover, but a murderer. I knew he was getting closer, all my life. That's why my parents locked me away; my drawings, my visions, my _hysteria._ I knew he would be there, waiting. At the asylum, I could feel him watching me. What I see has never been pastoral, or pretty, or fun. No, the glances I get are horrific, terrifying, _haunting._ My final hallucination before James drank of me was of Jazz. I heard his voice, shouting my name! I saw his face, his scars, _his history._ It was… _heavenly._ And then the devil took me, so I could be delivered."

I smelled the tang of Bella's tears, and I _wanted to go to her_.

"Don't Bella, don't pity me, don't cry for me." She was smoothing away the weeping tracks from my girl's face. Alice let me see her hands gently lifting away the plump drops. "My family gave me away. But these people right here? _They are my people._ And I would do anything for them. No matter what you hear, what you think, what you might feel at the end, I need you to believe that everything I do is to keep them all alive."

Bubba honked his nose into a hanky, and I shifted in my seat, I couldn't even look at Jazz. And then I didn't need to because the Sunday mornin' showdown began with Penske drivin' dude dumping a heap of pork scratching and beef jerky packages on the side of the road. Louisiana came out swingin', "I'm gonna' make sure you get fined for that, fuckhead!" His face was bright purple like vessels were popping all over it.

Texas Penske spat some baccy juice into the whole lotta' litter and jeered, "Here's a quarter, call someone who gives two shits."

"There's rules here now, you know! And you can't park that eyesore in your driveway no more neither," the Creole cranked up his blood-boilin' another notch.

"The fuck I care." Penske kicked a pile o' trash across the road and stomped inta his single wide.

I thought I was mumbling, "Yeah, nice. Luxury Hollows now has a Neighbourhood Association. And him there's the Head Ass in Charge."

I guess I was talkin' louder than I thought because Louisiana started stalkin' across the road, like he wanted to get torn limb from limb. By yours fuckin' truly.

I stood up and cracked my knuckles, loosened my neck, and got ready to dent his faggot faced-fender with my head.

Bubba cuffed my wrist to the magnolia I was just crossin' beneath and advised, "_Easy_, Rambo. No need to alert the neighbours." Even the fuckin' magnolia's glossy leaves and fat, waxy blossoms shook at me in disapproval.

Storming back to my chair that was hanging in threads, I let Em soothe the limp-dick's ruffled feathers.

At least Bella had quit crying, because I just couldn't stand that shit no more.

Catching up on Alice's and her conversation, I found them talkin' about me, "I can't explain why you're immune to Eddie's ability, but not mine or Jazz's. Perhaps it's just about being in the present—Eddie is special."

"Yeah he is," Bella's tone was dreamy. I could imagine the way she closed her eyes when she agreed, and that small smile on her lips…the same one she had when she came down from cumming.

"Aro's skill works the same way except he needs to touch you, then he's able to rape every single thought you ever had, as well as those from people you've had dealings with. Because of the nature of his craft, I believe he won't affect you. Jazz works on emotions… as does Chelsea, so there's the possibility she might have a hold over you. Jane, Alec—what they do is physical; he deadens, she inflames… the perfect yin yang twins. I hate to say it, but they're wild cards. Marcus could possibly read your relationships. Caius is just a homosexual, as far as I can tell.

"What I'm trying to tell you is no one knows the scale of your shield, Bella. Not until you meet the others, not until you become one of us."

"Well, don't they just sound like a regular Brady Bunch," Bella played it off, but I could read the worrying creeping into her voice.

"I don't see how I can stop anything bad from happening, Alice."

A distinct illumination unfolded over me. A subtle light, a look inside; Alice blew out her own garrison and allowed me into her eyes. "You have this," she touched Bella's temple, "And you have this," she placed her hand over Bella's heart.

_Damn, was she feelin' up my woman?_

"You have Eddie." Bella's eyes dilated and dropped and crinkled over a smile.

"There are vampires who are made out of goodness, Bella." She looked up. "For pure reasons, not just ruination or collection, or to do the most disgusting deeds." Bella shook her head, not wanting to know the truth, the abomination of our breed.

"Emmett, Eddie, Rose," the little Prickly Puck paused, and Bella held her breath, "They're not like me, not like Jazz." I knew the upward curve of Bella's mouth followed Alice's own, "That's why he and I are together." I felt her lift her shoulders… _acceptance, love._

"Only a handful are compassionate enough to make a vampire for the _right_ reasons. Carl, Irina… _Eddie._"

_Me?_

Fuck.

Aliceshowed her ass and shut me out just like that.

And I was back to overhearing them:

"You need to meet Esme and Carl, properly."

With an endearing edge of exasperation, Bella busted my balls and made known, "I told Eddie that last night."

"Stubborn fool."

"He asked me to move in with him."

"Oh shit!"

"I know."

_What the hell did that mean?_

Quietly, Bella mentioned, "To be turned or not to be turned, that is the question."

"You have time."

"Do I?"

"I can't say for certain, but a little bit yes," Alice said. "Or you can just go on your merry way."

"No, Alice, I can't."

On hearing their footfalls on the balled up rug inside, we relaxed in our seats and pretended we hadn't heard every damn word.

Bella came to me and sat in my lap. "You okay?' I asked.

"Yeah, baby," she ducked her head to put her lips to my throat in the exact place my blood had once thumped, broiling over the ropey muscle. "You? You look like you've been in a fight."

"Ain't nuthin'" I pushed my hips up enough she could feel how I wanted her, alone, without the Tainting Troll, without Bubba's roll, without Jizz's sidelong glances.

"I need to be with you, Bella," I pressed into her ear, I grabbed her derriere.

Bubba intervened, "So, Sis, you gonna' use your powers for good or evil?"

I didn't even want to hear it, "Shut the fuck up, Captain Caveman."

Em nodded to me, mumblin' about _'Better that than you bein' a morose sad-ass.'_

Linking her arms around my neck, Bella perked up, "Hey, all this talk on Caius got me thinkin' though."

I shook my head at her and gingerly thumbed her nipples.

She arched into my touch but carried on, a bit more breathily, "What tastes better, pussy or pecker?"

"Hot damn!" Em shouted.

All eyes focused on Jizzper; he'd had enough of both to form a statistical universe that'd withstand academic scrutiny.

Not that I really wanted to know.

The stranger in a strange land took out his toothpick and juggled it from fingertip-to-fingertip. Straightened up and grokked us all—with his swift emo-hippy-bullshit-good-vibrations, Jizz magicked us to a place where everyone was connected, bodies didn't exist, there was no man or woman…just now, and we were combined in one entity… _almost._

"Well now, seein' as I'm the only one who's had both snatch and shaft, right?" He paused.

His effervescence was headily enclosing us in some sort of utopian intermarriage.

Bella alone shrugged, "Maybe." Next to me, she looked like an apparition, a dream-weaver, all flexuous and insouciant and delicious in that gladiola-pink sundress.

Through the wavy espousal of hazy whirligigs Jizz turned around us, I managed to break through the trance enough to stare at her.

"_Shhhh_, he's doin' his hypnosis thing… and I'm just kidding, baby," she assured me.

I drowned back into Jizz's happy-clappy-fuck-who-you-want place and listened, Bella's hand in mine, "It's a toss up. Pussy is soft and sweet with many flavors and ripples and folds. Dick is hard and salty with rugged, velvety texture."

I squirmed.

Bubba spat out his brew.

Bella gaped.

Jazz finished, "Be that as it may, Alice's quim is the best." They adored each other with googly eyes.

"Beer goggles."

"Bull-hockey."

He came right back at me, "And you, my man, are King Tosser the Turd."

With the vicarious spell decidedly broken, I started gathering their various shit and laying it in their arms, "That's it, get the fuck out. Each and every one of you." Bella started towards the driveway until I towed her back to me, "Not you. You're here to stay." I neatened her hair and washed over the swollenness of her eyelids, coddling her from the pain she'd felt earlier.

Bubba was still standing around, complainin' about it being hotter than a popcorn fart.

I shoved him to his monster truck with a, "Go spit shine your cock on Rose's ass or somethin'. _And don't come back until tomorrow._"

_**~For Whom the Dinner Bell Tolls~**_

Bella had hoisted herself up onto the porch freezer. She licked her lips and looked down at her hands fiddling with the lock, "You never let me see inside your ice-chest."

I stilled, _was she talkin' about my heart? _It felt like I had a heart, as if it was _galumping_ and struggling to beat with every moment at her side or between her thighs. Looking at me with puzzled amusement, she knocked on the white refrigerated coffin she sat upon.

_So__, she really did want to see inside the fuckin' thing._ How well I remembered tryin' to rub one off on her the first time she'd been here while I had her splayed out on the buzzing, cooling container.

I shook my head, repeatedly stubbed the steel toe of my boot against the freezer filled with packets o' platelets so her rack jostled in a pleasant, steady rhythm, "Bella, I wish you wouldn't."

She skipped her fingers between mine, and I let her pull me to her. Against my sensitive earlobe she licked, "I want to know you, Eddie."

Throwing my head back, I yanked her to the edge and grunted as she nibbled up and down the ropey sinews of my neck, "_Ahhhh, Mary Motherfucker, that feels so goddamn good, love."_

She hummed against my Adam's apple until I shivered, and asked, "You cold, baby?" I felt her smile against my throat.

"Never, not with you." I rolled my head, and she sampled the other side of my jaw, tugging on my flesh, biting my chin, "I know _you_." I smirked and opened my heavy eyelids, "You talk in your sleep."

Bella's arms wound around me as her god-fucking-damn hellish mouth moved to my chest, my fingers working through the buttons ahead of her because I wasn't gonna' fuckin' make her multitask. "What'd I say?" she queried.

She sucked roughly on one of my nipples when I dipped down at my knees, running my dick against her inner thigh, up and down so she could feel just how unbearably horny she made me, "Not much," I gasped when she bit, and I felt it like a cunting current of smoke and fire straight down my stomach to my groin. "Just how much you like… _oh hellafire... _my lips." Bella touched them with her thumb, caressing them open so I sucked on that pad of flesh. "My eyes," she got on her knees and kissed each eyelid. "My cock," I grinned, then gritted my teeth when she dropped to all-fours and nuzzled my crotch. Pushing her hair away so I could watch her, I lowered to my own knees to be face-to-face with her, "You said how good you feel with me."

Our kiss was slow, low, moving, soft and sure and tempting and knowing.

Our foreheads met and we stopped. Bella smiled, "Well, I 'spose sleep talkin' has its rewards then."

"For damn sure," I agreed and then admitted, "I envy you that… _sleeping_."

Framing my face with her hands, Bella kissed all over me, "I know, baby. And I wish I could watch you slumber. It hurts my heart, Eddie," her eyes cloudy as a swamp with pain, "to know you'll never find that peace."

I touched the palm of her hands, one and then the other, with the barest brush of my mouth, "I find peace with you."

Then I returned her fingers to my cock, and I shit you not, the damn thing tried to jump the leash of my jeans to get directly to her hands, her mouth, her snatch. Biting her lip, she resituated me so my shaft was standing straight up against my belly, the tip decidedly making an appearance above the waistband causing Bella to moan and lean over for a swirling lick and yielding suck.

With straight arms, I pushed down on the lid of the freezer on either side of her, cradling the head of my cock in and out of her mouth, seeing her lips enfold and release. "Aren't you hungry," I moaned as I watched her tongue swish from side to side over the taut, purple head of my boner. I didn't know what the fuck I was sayin', but she hadn't eaten all day, and though I was sure my cum was a mouthful and more, she probably needed food, needed to keep her strength up, because fuckin' right I wasn't going to let up on her for the rest of the night.

Wiping the dashes of saliva and my fat drops of pre-release from her lips, Bella parried, "Aren't you?"

I pushed my Pavlov cock back down before it could jump the fence, "All the time."

"So?"

The sago palms rustled like legs shifting underneath hot sheets during a midsummer night's dream.

I rubbed my finger across my upper lip and hummed, and hemmed and hawed, considering… it may have been a brave new world with Bella, but still, "I ain't gonna' eat in front of you, unless it's your pussy."

Joining Bella's giggle was a throaty croak from around near my feet.

_You've got be kiddin' me._

Why the _fuck_ was a warty, fat fucker of a toad encroachin' on _my_ territory? I glared at the bumpy little bugger, I wasn't averse to a little toad-in-the-hole play, but didn't the drab and dumpy lopsided creature have any sense of self-preservation? Took me all of a nanosecond to dub the fuck 'Mike-Eye-of-Newt-Newton'.

Jumping down, Bella took the wee shit in her hands.

Fuckin' hoped Bubba had stocked up on Germ-X.

"Y'all are keeping a bullfrog now?"

"I think it's a toad, and _no_ we ain't keeping it. I just haven't squished it yet."

Squinting at the froggy fucker, she pouted, "Oh no, you can't!"

I shrugged, "'S'what I do, Bella."

She arched a sexy eyebrow and stared me down, "You drink toad blood?"

"Well… no. I mean, I kill animals, right?"

"You don't have to murder this little guy though," she declared, nearly rubbin' noses with Newty.

I kept mum as she plopped it back down to the planks, silently promising that other cold-blooded little monster he was gonna' be dead meat as soon as she left.

I managed to scuff and hiss at it so it pissed itself while Bella entered the trailer.

I found her looking around, shuffling through the contents of the cupboard, rifling through the fridge—those human household places I'd stocked up on at Piggly Wiggly last week just for her, "I could just have a fluffer-nutter."

Well, I didn't know exactly what that was, but it sounded kind of kinky so I just nodded my head… until she pulled out some peanut butter.

That cack-colored crap wasn't going to keep her satisfied for the long-term fucking I had planned.

I plonked the plastic jar back on the shelf and suggested, "Can't you make pasta or something? Isn't that what athletes eat?"

Placing both hands inside the opened lapels of my shirt, Bella coyly looked up at me, "Why, Eddie, are you suggestin' I'm going to need my energy?"

I bent to her ear and kissed, "Yes."

Bella sent a baleful look to the sink, which was unfathomably full of dirty pots and pans, "But, baby, it looks like all your dishes done been used already."

So I found myself up to my elbows in sudsy dishsoap. While she chopped some green and red and yellow shit up next to me.

It was really fuckin' weird, and… _nice._

After I'd dried a pot, Bella took it to the hob and started a smelly mess sizzling.

Too busy wondering how the hell two vampires had a sink full of dirty crockery, I didn't notice Bella come up behind me until her tits flattened against my back, and she pulled my shirt all the way off my wet arms, trailing beads of soap and water to my fingertips.

When I was half naked, she perched right against me again, her breasts swishing across my back, her hands sinking into the foam with mine, flirting amidst the warm water, guiding me as I sponged over a plate, wanting to spooge in her instead. Our actions sent sloshes of water spouting to my jeans and down my legs, especially when Bella tongued across my shoulders and blew up and down my spine.

Moaning, I observed her hands rising from the water before languidly teasing my abdomen, trailing the clenching muscles, "I can't help it, Eddie, I need to touch you now."

_Please, Miss, can I have some more? _

I followed the turn of her hands and put my wet palms on her ass, my back to the sink.

Without further ado, she stuffed her hands in my pants and found a fistful of cock. Her free fingers tufted through my crown, her eyes widened and then narrowed, her lips parted just the same way she spread my jeans, deliberately. I grabbed the counter and widened my legs. Gathering the opened placket of my pants, Bella suckled my ribs, drew a lazy line down my abs, robbing me of breath as her tongue tribbled the caving-in muscles at my pelvis. I knew she was going to wrap that mouth 'round my cock.

She fisted my pants and tore them down, but came back up, running fingers over the hair on my thighs that grew more heavy the closer it got to my balls, and my dick waving like a flagpole above her rising head.

She was murmuring and mumbling, but I couldn't concentrate because… _then_… she melted her tongue to me.

"_Oh fuck yes,"_ I was strangling, panting.

Seating herself between my legs, she tapped my thighs further apart and lapped my balls, taking them in her mouth, rolling them on her balmy tongue.

I stuttered, _"Uh-uh-uh…"_

Her whole damn mouth saturated my length as it arched across the side of my hip; then she swallowed over me, and I crashed against the counter, almost losing my footing against the slippery floor!

The feeling was so fuckin' intense. I swallowed for the last time, looked down, met her eyes as her lips met the middle of cock and then two inches lower, and I bit my tongue and hung my head and _slowly, gently, as tenderly as possible so I didn't break her neck_ thrust into her mouth, that glade of gloriousness that had me pulsating, pulsing, aching, pulling, crying out loud, "_Fanny fuckin' Hill!"_

All she had to do was cup my balls and draw them down, and I was a fuckin' _goner._

I had no idea how long it took my hips to stop lurching, my breath to stop chugging, my hands to unclench, my eyes to open to find Bella before me, backhanding her mouth and licking her lips.

She bent over to pull my jeans back up because I was still completely incapacitated.

I got a good tit shot in the process.

Smiling widely like the cat that ate the canary, _more likely the cream_, Bella hummed, "Don't know if I'm all that hungry anymore."

I swatted her ass and sucked on her lips and pressed, "Like fuck. Go on, get you some food." I stepped to her before she turned, "Thank you."

Finishing the dishes, I supped on sidelong glances of her as she moved gracefully about my kitchen.

She had far too many clothes on for my likin'.

Bending over to check something of a particularly nauseating stench in the oven, Bella tantalized me beyond reasoning with the lift of her dress over and against her thighs.

Sitting down on one of our mismatched chairs, I called her to me.

Tilting my head, I preyed apart her dress. "Eddie, I'm cookin'!"

"That you are." I slid the side of my hand down her middle, her tits jutting, her hips swaggin'.

"Take it off," I lounged back in the chair with my arms folded behind my head.

Almost shyly, oh so goddamn sweetly, Bella left the frail sundress off her shoulders until it ruffled to the ground like flower petals, fallen at her feet.

_No bra, 'course not._

Her nipples were bright and aroused.

I grabbed my hair and snarled, but didn't touch her, "Panties.''

"_Oh dear god,_" Bella pronounced before hooking the diaphanous lacy scrap down her legs.

"Happy now?"

"Almost." I stood, brushed past her so our denuded upper bodies collided and jolted apart, headed to the pantry where I took out a freshly pressed pinafore.

"Eddie, my sauce is burning," she admonished.

Two fingers between her legs and I concurred, "So it is."

Her chin lifted as I placed the pinny over her, taking my time to dress it just right, turning her to tie the ribbons at the back in a bow that sat right on top of her bare ass. I kissed both cheeks, felt over the tears of her tits jutting from the demure, naughty apron, "Now I'm happy."

She read the motto in filigree script on the front of the frilly white fabric, "You come up with that on your own?"

"You had somethin' to do with it." I held my bottom lip between my teeth and appraised Bella in the smock, circling her, caressing a bare throat, a round, creamy shoulder, a trembling tit. "_Mmmmm_, you still got some South In Your Mouth?" I dipped to kiss her, lunging into her mouth with my tongue and leaving with a wet smack of our lips.

Unsteadily, Bella returned to the stove, throwing over her shoulder, "Where'd you get it?"

"Grits Festival, love." I winked at her.

My nostrils flared while she elegantly, near-nakedly, made her repast. The apron cinched her waist and every so often, when she came near enough, I gathered the sash that wound over her ass.

Sitting across from me, Bella began to eat.

She licked her fork, touched the tines with her teeth sending up a chime. I fidgeted in my chair, not as an act to appear more human, but out of necessity to ease the aching, torturous throbbing of my cock.

She twirled some pasta around the fork–the way she twirled her tongue up and down my dick, the way I _twirled_ her tresses around my forearm when I needed her, hard.

Eating this crap took up too much time, I needed her to work faster.

_Hmmmm, maybe some motivation?_

I stood up.

Bella gulped and chewed faster.

"Need some incentive, _lover_?"

"Show me what you got."

_Oh hell yes, I will._

I tarried over my belt, lifting it from its brass notches in leather.

"Take a bite."

_Oh hell yes, I would._

"_Swallow._ And another."

I took down my jeans, all the way to floor, and kicked them aside.

_Better fuckin' believe it, I could._

"I really wanna fuck you _hard._ Feel you, _riding me._ But I need you to eat."

My dick was scant inches from her lips, her fork hung in the air, her eyes skittered from my mouth to my rock rigid dick, trembling to be nearer.

"Eat."

Devouring a few mouthfuls, Bella eyed me the entire time.

Quick as a sprite, she lunged forward with the tip of her tongue, and I wanted it, god I did, but I fluidly stepped back with instinctual grace, "_Uh uh uh_, not yet, sweetheart."

I pumped myself. And prompted her.

"More."

"Mind if I partake while you eat? I ain't even had an appetizer." I knelt and pushed the negligible skirt up and licked her thighs and hovered over her pussy before pressing my mouth into her, licking, moaning, kissing, _groaning. So fuckin' hungry._

Bella's back was a bowed thing, her hips an avowal, her plate shoved away with a crack of china and cutlery to the very edge of the marked-up table.

_Now._

"Now." _Starving._

Toying with me, she shoved my head back by my hair, "Maybe I should clear the table first."

_No fuckin' way._

Finding my feet, I towered over her, "Lick."

Once more, my cock was in her mouth, and I wanted to stay there, but that just wasn't enough.

I cleared the goddamn table, alright. With my arm. Every damn thing clattered to the floor.

Her hands to the top, the near edge, to brace herself, she lifted her hips, and I readied myself, slowing down, touching her inner lips and clit and nest with my head.

Then I slammed into her and cried out!

And stopped and bled out.

And whispered, "Okay, okay, okay. _Slow, gentle, soft, slow, tender."_

Her sloe-gin eyes blinked up at me, "It's okay, Eddie, you can go faster, baby."

Pounding my fist to the table, I _took her._

And then I ceased, I backed out, my feet taking paces away as my dick left her… wetness all over us, her spine arching, her head wavering, her tone raw, "Please!"

A hand to her bottom-heavy tits, pulling up on her nips, as viciously as was pleasurable, I sank my mouth to her lips, sunk my dick right back into her… _hard, cold, icy, melting._

Every time, I sloughed out, and I lurched in.

The kitchen filled with desirous din.

Plates breaking, windows cracking, the table creaking, the lino squeaking, the suck of pussy squelching, my resonating cock filling her.

Finally, I lay across her… to nip, to snuggle, to cuddle… _to make love_.

In… fast. Out… slow.

We both winced and moaned with every plunge and release, each crest and decease.

Fucking.

_Lovin'._

In the end there was _nothing _between us.

_No words, no breath, no breadth, no skin._

Subsumed.

My hand covered her pussy, her hand clamped over her mouth, my mouth was stuck between her tits and we both yelled and froze, a frieze.

_Ended._

Hours later, and my bedroom was tore up.

Bella was a hot mess.

She fell off of me and simpered; I couldn't understand a damn word she mumbled.

Fuck that pasta shit, tomorrow I was gonna' buy her some Wheaties.

I rolled to the middle of my shitty single bed, laughing… _tiredly?_

She sighed and slid and groped and found her way on top of me, bedding down for the night, "What?"

"Nothin', love." I made a nest for her in the crook of my arm and quoted, "_Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine." _

_

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_

~I would LOVE to hear from you! Please, please tell us what you thought, this was a really important chapter for Eddie… he's been a bit anxious, ladies~

**Literary, and other, references in order, I think (y'all, I'm only doin' the ones that got a hard mention… you can try to spot all the others):**

_**A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens**_

_**To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee**_

_**The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare**_

_**Othello, Shakespeare**_

_**Catch-22, Joseph Heller**_

_**Statue of Guilietta in Verona:**_

_cache(DOT)virtualtouris(DOT).com/2673307-Statue_of_Juliet-_

_Verona(DOT)jpg_

_**Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut**_

"_**It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"**_

_**from A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens**_

_**Macbeth, Shakespeare**_

_**Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein**_

**(and a lesson on 'grok' from said novel):**

"To grok (pronounced /ˈɡrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. Author Robert A. Heinlein coined the term in his best-selling 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. In Heinlein's view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed."

The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment."

_**For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway**_

_**Fanny Hill, John Cleland**_

_**Probably some Doctor Seuss rolickin' around there too, because.**_

"_Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine."_

_**from Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury**_

_**~~ll~~**_

**This is very EXCITING:**

A couple of staunch, sexy, talented, sassy, smart ladies who took rather a shine to Eddie on Facebook have been workin' their fool heads off to create:

**The Official Dead Confederates First Anniversary Contest:**

**June 5****th**** to June 18****th**

**Check out his FB album under DC Anniversary Contest for details (link on mah profile).**

Make friends with Eddie dcCullen on Farcebook (again, on my profile), go now to see all his sexy savagery and get properly prepared, Eddie style, for the fun times to come. It'll be all sorts of sinful fun and Southern and sultry so y'all should check it out! Coming soon: artwork, new avi's for y'all, music…and prizes, of course. Oh, but you're gonna' have to work for it ;-).

With my love (and Eddie's… well, pretty much whatever y'all want), I give my thanks to the Master-minge who shall remain unnamed, MsEM WetMore (the artist in residence), Lindz (the most fuckin' amazing Robnipulator, you can catch her at robmaniporn(DOT)blogspot(DOT)com/?zx=e1ab584f7b5de5f1), and the TFFA (Twilight Fan Fic Addicts) Blog (twilightfanficaddicts(DOT)/?zx=a7468c2e704c518b).

_**~~ll~~**_

**Giggle Snort** voting ends June 4th (Eddie… Small Fry—yeah, I know, now I'm just baiting the beautiful, dastardly vampire).

**Twilight All Human Awards** voting NOW OPEN, until the 18th of June (me, Best Author of the Year).

Links on my profile.

_**~~ll~~**_

Again, I implore you to read _Rebelward Without a Cause_ outtakes. Specifically, for this chapter, Alice's _Seeking Asylum_ and Jazz's _Searching for Oblivion_. Most recently we had a glimpse of Eddie's poetic talents in _The Hard Bard,_ and next is a feature on our very own Bubba by my gorgeous friend, favorite writer, and Emmett aficionado, winterstale.

_**~~ll~~**_

Many thanks to FL95 for reccing DC's in her story, _Cullen Unscripted._ Big balmy kiss to you!

Cheers, Rie~


	22. Sweet Emotion

**Sorry this is a tad late; the inner-web connection's been out at the DW. **And let me tell you, it really fuckin' sucks to be offline when you have a new chapter and **Eddie's BLOG**! That's right, he goddamn does. So, many thanks before I even start this for your patience, and love to Viola for being there when I managed to hop on, to Derrydown Green and MsEm for putting up with my freak-outs (I'm pretty talented at those) and most especially to my best friend, Gayle King, for letting me camp out at her house so I could get shit done on The BLOG (so I didn't appear too much of a loser) and making me sandwiches (yeah, she did), bringing me beer (uh huh, you know it), and entertainin' my kids as well as her own—y'all fuckin' rock my world.

I have two betas that I love, you're goddamn right they're a cut above. Morning, nooners, late nights and dawn, Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta have me and Eddie as their ever-grateful pawns.

***DC BLOG ALERT***

deadconfeds(DOT)wordpress(DOT)com/

**and of course you can find it on my profile.**

What? Yeah. Eddie has one. Pull up the porch couch, go poke around the pantry, have a look at the family 'poortraits', see the chapters in living color with tunes, and hang out with Mama Brown and Bubba and the entire coven/clan. Goddamn right, it's full-on sexy, South in Your Mouth. All OFFICIAL Dead Confederate First Anniversary contestants (as hosted on Fuckbook) will be dead-delighted to find out about the winners and prizes; and everyone who took part has their pick of specially designed swag.

**All future teasers will ONLY posted on the blog (as well as announcements and…**_**well**_**…. everything you all pretty much love about Dead Feds including fan art, outtakes, links to the shit we love :::cough:awesome chicks and their writing, recs and blogs:cough::: so y'all might as well sign the fuck up now: subscribe, **_**feed**_** your heads, get it on. **_**Suck, bang, blow Eddie.**_

You pretty much made my sun set with the reviews since last time. Honestly. I'm still tipping one back in thanks to y'all who've taken note of Eddie's imperfect, indecent, impossible insanity (i.e. there were over two hundred reviews since the last chapter—TWO HUNDRED. Damn, I need another drink).

For FB fuckery and for putting together the contest, for pulling all-nighters and attempting to ignore my nattering while you created the most sexy blog ever, I have got to thank MsEm and Derrydown Green. There's nothin' much to say other than we can never thank them enough (that shout-out goes to linz at Robmaniporn too for working up some hot shit for DC's). DW h00rs get special slaps, of course, and winterstale, RowanMoon, frol223, Gayle King,Gasaway Alley—much love. FB broads (listen, you know Eddie chats you up nightly…I don't want to start a cat fight by naming names), we'll talk to you majestic mistresses later. I know, shut it. I'm acting like I won the Oscars . I don't give a fuck. I just wanted to say I love y'all.

In spite of storms, power outages, phone lines down and other assorted bull-fuckin-shit, I hope to get this out before kstew411 turns in her stripes. Cheers to you for championing DC's!

Disclaimer: Oh my fuck, obviously. I do not own Twilight and all that fantastically fertile ground. I _do_ own these precise characters, the setting, the premise, the DW, a Bronco, a Ford 2500HD, a medicine cabinet, some Doritos, a pack of Cheetos, and all the good shit here-in.

~~I don't know for certain, but I think we can probably just go with an NSFW disclaimer for pretty much all future chapters. Enjoy~~

Song, obvs, _Sweet Emotion, _Aerosmith:

www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=1-8AOddGy4Y

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**Sweet Emotion**

I'd taken offense when Bella had gotten up in the middle of the night to rummage around her duffle that I'd brought in from her truck, looking for her night clothes. Braced on my elbow, thoroughly fuckin' pleased with the way her eyes wafted to the sheet tenting over my cock, I'd placed my hand over one of the many moist blots we'd made on my tiny bed, "You really need to put somethin' on?"

Her naked ass had shimmied in the half-gloom of the Harvest moon's glow, like firelight touching every precious goddamn piece of her, _and yeah_, I was jealous of the moon's rays as well as annoyed she was goin' to hide her delicious body from me.

She'd smiled a little, and it was just this side of sexually sinister, "Oh, I don't _have to_, Eddie. But I think you might like me to."

Well, that had caught my attention.

And the midnight blue, silken thing skating over her curvaceous tits, hips, and ass held it.

"What's that?" my voice had been gruff, my index finger pointed to the thin cloth clinging all over her.

"It's a nightgown, baby."

Standing, I'd walked right up to her, stopping only when her hot, pointy nipples struck my tensed midriff, "That ain't no fuckin' nightgown. Nightgowns are flannel, and high necked, and hideous." I slid my fingers into the rich satin, feeling her warmth through the material, with a decadent delirium to fuck her in every goddamn way possible making me shake. The neckline plunged down her cleavage, her tits were hung under gathers, slung over her shoulders were the most pathetic excuses for straps I wasn't able to resist hooking a finger under, desperate to tug it free. _"Shit,"_ I'd whispered.

Stepping back, I'd motioned with my hand, "Turn."

She hadn't turned, _of-fuckin-course-not_. Bella had swiveled her hips and smoothed her hands and shook her ass and tilted her head back to me and angled her insanely hot body so that I had the most unbelievable view of her tit peeking from the gaping side of the 'nightgown'—the bottom contour of her breast lifting up in a soft, fleshy weight so that only her puckered nipple remained hidden.

The indent of her waist, the swell of her hips, _the sweetest Christly ass dimples and all her gorgeous back bared down to the top of her bottom._

My hands slid into the side of her dress as it slither-whispered around her feet, my lips had wet her shoulders, her spine, the nape of her neck, "Yeah, this ain't no nightgown."

Smirking, my sensual goddess, the sexy smartass had placed her hands on my chest and looked down at the enormous erection aimed at her, "Well, I 'spose Bubba might call it a peignoir, what with his Babs Cartland fetish." The slinky minx had walked to the single, square, four by four window of my bedroom, probably on purpose, because just then that fat fucker of a moon chose to break through summer night cloud cover and illuminate every friggin' inch of her porcelain skin. "You know, I was flipping through _Fire in the Blood_ in the john, and it ain't half bad**."**

I hadn't heard a word she'd said. She was too far away, all of three feet from me, "Get back over here."

Negating me, she'd made out, "Not so fast, Buster, I put this on so we could talk."

_Talk?_ 'Buster' was right because I'd been about to bust my fuckin' nut, her in that overtly negligent negligee—I mean, the cunting cloth, if it even had a right bein' called that, had hardly contained her tits and been wound so tightly round her I could see the wispy curls of her pretty pubic hair, and it'd dripped so hazardously off the seascape of her bottom I had a near good idea I could get my fingers right down around her ass and into her cleft from behind.

I'd blustered, "Jesus Mother Fucker and Christ-on-toast, Bella! You expect me to be able to talk while you're wearing that… _that_…that… _what is that?"_

Laughing, happy, she'd wandered back to me, taken my wrists, made me sit on the hard piano bench and dropped her hands behind me, on either side, so her tits swung right at mouth level and the keys plonked an out-of-tune squawking. "You slippin', baby? I already told you what this is. Now," she'd ruffled my hair and let me muffle my lips to her nips for a minute, "Go wrap up in a sheet or something' before I pull my nightie up and ride you right here and now."

_What?_

I'd scowled and muttered and frowned and stuttered.

_Fuckin' ride me already, again, dammit!_

Beggin' the Pavlov Cock to stop, for one goddamn moment, from thinkin' on the sweet, wet, tart, hot haven of Bella's pussy, I'd wound the top sheet over my hips, sat against the wall, and garnered my woman to me.

I'd tried to keep my hands to myself.

I'd murmured, "You okay, love?"

Her legs had wound with mine, under the sheet so I had a really hard time seein' the point of covering up at all, but her voice had been so suddenly quiet and soft and timid, I'd pushed away my boner with my hand clamped to my crotch and held her small chin that was losing its forthright strength and nearly wobbling.

_Fuck, please don't cry, please don't cry._

I hadn't been able to bear the pool of swampy sadness filling her eyes. I'd taken her cheek in my palm and brought her sniveling face to my neck where drips of salty tears made puddles and tracks all the way down my chest.

_Aw, crap, Bella was cryin'._

Tangling my hand in her hair, I'd shushed her, soothed her, even while my nuts clenched and that open hole in my heart hurt.

"It's because we're vampires, right?"

She'd snuffled a little and smushed further against me.

"It ain't right, I know."

Shifting closer to me, Bella's tits had leaped out of her nightgown-peignoir-negligee-lingerie thingy, "No."

_Fuck!_

With my free hand I'd stopped tearin' up the bedding and seized the left side of my chest, massaging the eternal twinge that mirrored the inimitable throb of my cock.

If I was a lesser vamp, like Em, I'd think I was having a heart attack. I'd whispered, "I'm sorry. It's all seven different shades of wrong, I know that. Bella," I'd dropped kisses all over her ratty-fucked-to-hell-and-back-again hair. "I mean, there's the Shaman Smurfette," at that she'd snuck even closer and giggled through some more snot and tears, "my brother from another mother fucker who thinks he's about to crap out at any moment. Then there's Jizz and his poontang-slash-cock gobbling and grokking to deal with. Anddon't even get me started on Maw and Paw… I know you wanna meet them." I'd struggled for air as her shoulders shook and she'd blown her nose into a Kleenex from the ever present box by my bed that I'd handed to her. "And them Vultures, the SS Volf, the Volterra diehards."

She'd rubbed her raw nose and swollen lips against my throat so I'd continued, my torrent of confessions knowing no bounds, "And then there's Chelsea, and Dasher-"

"Whoa, _Dasher_? That's a damn Reindeer. Who the heck is Dasher?" Her face bright with emotion and silty with tears was centimeters from mine.

"Uh, no one you need to worry about, _love?"_ I'd rubbed her ass and brought her back to me.

Her little gasps and crying jags and hiccups had me _dying_, "I know it's unnatural and all."

I'd felt the smile on her mouth flush against me, and it made me unleash a pent-up breath, relax my muscles, find a goddamn tiny bit of hope.

"Shut up, Eddie," her voice had been scraped with all the weeping. "You sure do know how to dig yourself a hole."

I'd nodded.

"You ain't unnatural," she'd stroked my ribs, tickling me a bit. "I'll tell you what's abnormal."

The sheet had lowered to my thighs and boiling air had reached my divining rod cock as it pointed its full prick-head to Bella, obviously under the command of her voice, "Okay?"

Taking charge of my body, Bella had sat her satin-covered ass over my groin and smilingly pressed my dick against her rearend, "Unnatural is Danny Radcliffe, of pretty boy Harry Potter fame, in Equus. _Naked Harry Potter, _now that's all wrong," she'd shuddered above me.

_Did she just call Harry Poncey Potter pretty? I thought I was the pretty one…_

Pushing her hips back so my cock fit tightly to the naughty nightie, rocking against me, she'd brushed against my biceps, "You're a beautiful man, baby."

Arcing back, my neck had opened to her lips, "_Uuuuh, yeah, can we not talk about Harry Pissypants Potter right now?"_

Choking back laughs that made her tongue twitch in its lapping of my pectorals, she'd argued, "But I heard he's hung like a… horse."

_Fuck That._

Brandishing near nothing of my power, I'd agilelyput Bella on her back before she could say 'Saddle up'.

"You mentioned a ride, earlier. And don't fuckin' talk to me about other cocks," I'd sampled her nipples on my way to her mouth, blending our tongues in a hot soup of tug-of-war.

"_Mmmmm, _I'm just messing with you," she'd reached down and dragged my cock to her slit and passed my head over her clit, again and again.

Stopping, stilled, she'd placed her palms to my cheeks and thawed my skin, "Eddie, I know you want my body." I'd hovered above her and let the tip of my dick sink over her pussy, sweeping up the hot juices that made a lubricious, sexy glade. "But what about my blood?"

Rolling off of her, I'd made that nest she liked, inside my arms and against my side, "You smell sweeter than any damn flower, you make me hornier than a goddamn ruttin' bull, your blood," I'd lifted my hand from her to watch the blue highways mapping a roadway from her neck to her tits to her hips to her thighs, "makes me _thirsty._"

The air from her lungs had scattered like the litter on Coleman Boulevard durin' a June rainshower.

"But I'm more than hungry for you, Bella." I'd lowered down and made her nice and cozy on top of me, "I could have you in so many ways, but I only want you as my lover." I'd cupped her lovely face and told the bald truth, "But I'm beginning to believe the only way to save you is to kill you."

_I oughta know better than to spout off damn poetry and stupid shit after makin' love to her for seven hours straight. She was exhausted. _Her hiccough had heralded another round of wealthy crying.

"I'm sorry," the slip-slide-stream of tears crushed me, and I'd begged pardon once more.

"Don't be," she forgave as I'd shoved ten more tissues to her and took one to wipe her face gently.

Backhanding her eyes with her fists, Bella had bronzed me into a statue. I hadn't dared move for upsetting her again. Now I understood the delicate walk of a relationship.

_A relationship? Motherfuck, I was going soft._

My cock disagreed, forming a new teepee.

"It's just been a long day," at her mention of 'long', my boner attempted to demonstrate the meaning of that word. "And I'm scared, and I don't see how I can possibly save everyone, and to become one of y'all…" Bella'd punched my muscled stomach and sat all prim—as prim as a goddamn goddess could in a slip that sagged and tucked and was _completely_ asking me to fuck her—while I'd quietly blown cool air across the contusion she'd gotten from slapping my sides.

Intruding into my fantasy of taking her from behind with her nightie thrown over her waist and her tits hanging like precise pendulums, she'd worried. "You're so young, Eddie."

I'd laughed sarcastically. _Young I was not._

"You don't age."

_I goddamn hoped not, because I'd be worse off than Hugh Heff by this point, and the slack-ass Playboy pool partying old fart oughta know better._

"You've stood still." _Yes, until her._

"I don't know what to do, baby."

She'd let me cradle her and kiss her and touch her and tell her, "Whatever you want from me, Bella. I'm yours."

"I don't want to let go," had come her small whisper. "I _want_ to be the _one._ I want to be _your_ one. I want… _you._ And I don't want us to die."

_I'd take that._

"So, you're not leavin' me?" I had to ask.

"Not unless you don't stop talkin'," she'd yawned and looked so cute and sleepy.

"You're tired," I'd wrapped her up in my arms and blankets and sheets, with clean cotton and sinews about her, "C'mere."

I thought it over while she slept, seeing Bella as one of my own kind.

She was already my kin.

I kept trying to wake her, but she just huffed and sank deeper into slumber.

_And I'd take that away from her, her dreams, her human future._

I would.

Just to have her; the fuckin' Volturi didn't even figger in this decision, not to me.

It didn't matter she could _save_ me.

I'd already been given my second chance.

With Bella.

_The only one._

Damn if her slip or nightie or gown rose up, higher and higher with her tossing and turning and light, riffling snoring.

I helped it along the way with my hand to the wayward slit widening over her thigh.

Dawn's early light pearled the strands of her hair like eels swimming to the surface of my chest.

Sepia, a siren, a silvery screened goddess, she blinked, smiled, yawned, kissed my nearest skin, _my heart that was gone._

It was too early, but I wasn't gonna shake a stick at her wakening.

Stretching, Bella was beautiful.

Purring, Bella sounded like chorales.

I pushed my hand under hanks of hair, feeling the perspiration of her sleep melt my fingertips, "Mornin'."

"Yeah, good morning, baby," lazily smacking lips, we cleaved to the bed until my legs were hanging off it.

Situating myself, I fingered her bits, over that nefarioussnakeskin riding up her body.

Her plush bottom lip pursed and sounded, 'OH, yes!"

Struming her lips that were damp licks to my fingers, I mesmerized Bella, "I love-"

She inhaled sharply, "Yes?"

"The way your hair looks like a rat's nest of a mornin'. All kinky, wild, and soft."

Taking to my ass, she bit my earlobe and then swept across it, slowly moaning, "_Yeah. _I love-"

I halted.

"Your coolness, your… _endurance_," she played with my cock and touched my chest and kissed my mouth and pulled my hair, "your _sweetness_."

I swatted her bum and pulled her from plumbing the depths of my dick's neediness.

Something goddamn growled, and it wasn't me.

"Hungry?"

"Yeah, you?"

"Always, love."

"And?"

"I'll get somethin' to eat later."

She gave a belly laugh that belied her petite size, "Where at? Sonic? For a Happy Hour Chiller?"

I'd just have to give Bella her protein shake later, because now, unfortunately, she needed to eat.

She pulled on one of my t-shirts that was so long it swished in lank cotton about her thighs, and I took up a clean pair of jeans, tipped my dick inside, wincing as my length filled up the crotch.

Hangin' free, I left the top button undone.

Bella smiled and stroked my shaft, "Need some breathing room, do ya'?"

We made our way to the kitchen, shuffling against each down the narrow passageway, her hand in my front pocket, jingling my balls like they were car keys and my fingers splayed across her heart-shaped bottom.

Then I saw _them_.

Why the fuck was it standing-room-only in my kitchen at asscrack-o'clock on a Monday morning?

Em, the Minikin Meddler, Junior, they were all friggin' there.

Disgruntled to find a pow-wow interrupting my pussy-cock swap and meet _a-fuckin'-gain_, I shoved through them, "'Scuse me, pardon me, _Fuck Off._"

In the pathetic, shit-ass hours of the mornin', after the noisy little motherfuckin' crickets finally crapped out and before the blasting birds began their din, I'd hopped over to the Food Lion grocers. To get some Wheaties. Because I hadn't been fucking jokin' about that shit. I'd grabbed some oleander blossoms, stolen a few dinnerplate-sized hibiscuses from Alice's black-on-black back garden and arranged them in a glass. I'd set the table, readied the OJ, tried to make coffee, even though it smelled and looked like tar to me.

As I pulled out Bella's chair and placed a paper napkin in her lap, making sure my fingers tickled her sex in the process, she glared at our company and then raised her palms to her cheeks, "Oh my, Eddie!"

She clapped a hand to my neck and yanked me down for a famished kiss filled with wet and tongue and lip-sucking and moaning.

Her forehead to mine, she breathed, "Baby, thank you. No one's ever made me breakfast before."

Every-fuckin' one of us, me included, shook our heads and touched that vagrant place in our chests at her gratitude.

She filled her bowl, drank her juice, spat out the coffee all over the table, staining my shirt.

I punched Bubba in the gut, cracked Jizz in the ribs, gave the finger to the Cheeky Little Charlatan.

Nonplussed**, **Bubba asked, "So, what'd you kids get up to last night?"

I gave him the bird from both hands.

Rubbing his size-fuckin'-abnormal paws together, he carried on his merry way, "Alrighty then, should we strategize or somethin'?"

Bella gulped down her Breakfast of Champions; would that she were swallowing my ejac and not having to listen to this bullhockey.

I glowered at Em.

"What? We're not in Kansas anymore, braw," he went for a blood packet from the fridge until I shook my head forcefully at him.

"No shit, Tinman," I placed a hand on Bella's shoulder, her heartbeat resounding even there. "We're in Cainwhore."

"There ain't no Emerald City," Jazz spat into the sink.

"I don't think we should talk about this now," I pleaded, my eyes fallen to Bella who was beginning to rise from her seat, her breakfast only half finished. I needed her to eat more, fill her the hell up for a few hours at least.

"Cowardly Lion," Alice sparred.

"Shut it, Scrawny Scarecrow," I barked.

"Hey, _Wizard_, it doesn't really matter anyway," the Marauding Munchkin brandished.

"What does that mean?" I needed to know.

"It's all a moot point, until," she pointedly looked towards Bella, "…until Bella makes up her mind."

The stamp of irritation crossed Bella's pretty face, "I told you, I'm not ready to make that decision yet."

"Just you wait a cotton-pickin' minute, Alice. Whatever happened to protectin' the womenfolk? _This_ is unnatural." My fists pulsed with rage and the need to make safe and keep everyone alive, and it goddamn _castrated_ me to think this all came down my woman!

Bella's chair scraped back and she shirked off my hand, "I got this, baby." she was incredible in her ire, goddamn glorious and steaming mad, she turned to my brothers, my almost-sister, "You think I wouldn't do _anything_ I possibly could to save you… _you_… you people? My heart breaks for y'all! When I think about what you've gone through, and that you feel ashamed for who you are," she shook her and looked up at me through her long eyelashes skipping across the fleck of freckles on the crests of her cheeks. "_You,_ Eddie." She turned and took every one of us in, "You, all. You're more human than most _people_ with heartbeats and blood."

Her hair still ratty and in need of a brushing, my coffee-drenched tee hangin' off her shoulders, her breasts honeyed, unbound hills beneath, her arms strong and capable, she made it clear, "It's not that I don't want to be like you. I just," a weary smile came and went, "I don't yet understand how I can be _the one_."

I folded her to me, feeling her trembling body and the throb of anger and worry beating in her temples as I massaged her locks, looking askance at her morning meal goin' to waste.

"Not to be a downer or anything," Jizz spoke quietly, touched Bella's back and backed up to his lady, "But do you have any idea when the Wicked Witch of the East might be trackin' down Eddie again?"

The Hellish Hobgoblin nodded quickly, linking herself around Jizz, "Yes. Maybe. It looks like _Chelsea_ never gave up your scent. And she was undeterred by our sabotage in Myrtle Beach."

"I don't give a flyin' fuckin' monkey's asshole about Chelsea!" I made clear.

Sucking in a breath, Bella bore up and rounded on them all, "Well, now, if Chelsea's the Beastly Bitch of the Bloods, who's Glinda?"

"Rose," Lovestruck Thunder Thighs replied, goofy smile in place.

I kissed Bella, her radiant expression made it clear she knew exactly what she was doin'. Deflecting, bartering, biding her time.

"You know, the actress who played her was called Billie Burke?" she drawled.

"That right?" Bubba looked all puzzled. "Not Billie-Sue Burke?"

"No, man, straight up Billie Burke," Jazz rolled out his toothpick and trolled in a joint.

Bubba scritched his neck, "Huh, well that's a weird name for a chick. Now, I could see a man called somethin' like that, a cop maybe… has a certain ring to it."

"Now, Eddie, what about that Emerald City?" the High and Mighty Houdini hooked my attention again.

"What now?" she was spooking me, but I didn't want to look like Billy-no-mates so I played along.

"Carl told me you had jade eyes as a human boy," she smirked knowingly.

Bella seesawed in my arms, filling out her chest with breaths that made her nipples fair and engorged against me, "You did?"

I nodded.

"They musta' been so pretty, Eddie," she touched my lips and pulled me down so she could purse her mouth against my eyelids, "Wish I could have seen them." She wrapped her hands around my ass and wiggled into my cock, "But your big, glorious golds always astonish me, honey."

A deep tug of air charged my chest.

A huge hit of poison pushed up my prick.

_She accepted me._

"Well, now that that's _not _settled, maybe we could just get high," Jizz flicked his Zippo and my cool gale extinguished it.

With a primary-colored flyer in hand, Bubba countered, "Or we could just go to the Walmart, there's some good shit on sale."

"Yeah, Toto, just you do that, _all of you_," I started ushering them out the door, "I'll meet y'all there later." Some fucker had to keep an eye on Cracker Jazz, Little-Miss-Muffet-Stuffit-in-her-hobo-bag and Snuggie Huggy Bear Bubba.

Bella wasn't in the kitchen.

Bella weren't in the john.

Bella wasn't in the living room.

No, she was in my bedroom, atop my bed, legs spread like an all-you-can-eat.

And I fuckin' intended to.

Until I watched her present her mouth around a finger then coast it down the valley between her breasts, over her belly, right to her heavenly folds…_folds of flesh that were warm and sexy and waiting and wet._

"I believe I promised you a ride."

Holding onto the paneling and ripping a new groove into it, I supplied, stupid with her sensuality, "Only if you'll let me return the favor." _What the fucking Hell? 'Only if'? Oh hell and NO, this bein' considerate shit had to stop._ I strode to the divinity she'd gifted to me and passed my tongue up to her cherry blossom clit; between sucks and nips, I deferred, "I mean, _yeah, fuck yeah._" I planted a luxurious kiss to her pussy, stood to rid myself of the bondage of my jeans and said, "Let me drive you home later though."

I kissed her with the warmth of her silkiness slipping between us, my dick tapping her clit and glissading over the glistening, creamy tucks between her thighs, "I'll get your truck back to your house and pick you up from Mama's later, I just want to show you off a bit and-"

Her eyes come-hither, her mouth libidinous, her tits provocative, she hushed me, "Eddie? Put a sock in it."

She sank over me, slowly rolling on top of my chest. I had her fingers in my mouth, ingesting her flavor, her pussy encasing me, I fell back to my forearms to watch _this_ woman driving delectably over me, "Oh, now I'm gonna' sock it to you, love."

Braced on me, she leaned over and sucked my lips, slurped my tongue, hung her titties over me like a tease.

"That a promise?"

A swallowtail butterfly in brown and ivory filaments, her colors delicate felicitations, her deciduous hips priapations. Thorax, throat, wings, lifting, strong and flying… _nectar rich pollen._

I hissed an endless, "_Fuuuuuuuck."_

She sat back, bowing, her mounds on display, her ass molded within my hands, "Bella, you have no idea…"

Straightening, she shimmied over me, sweat and silk and fire and _fucking hell_. Her look carnal, erotic, illicit, implicit.

With just a shift of her hips I sank deeper and panted.

She cupped her boobs and tugged her nipples, her fingers beneath my tongue as I took the silky dots of flesh into my mouth, "Yeah I do. You like my tits."

Cupping those globes, she offered them only to me as I hummed and mashed them together because I was a greedy bastard who wanted everything at once.

"Oh fucking shit!" I bayed until the pedals of my piano pressed a long, soulful tune under the weight of my tortured yell.

She rode me like a succubus, lifting her hair, lingering over her clit, feeling along my dick's egress in and out of her, smiling all the time and touching my face, my stomach, my abs, my ass to pull me up with her mortal might. Sneering with want, "Harder."

"Oh my Hell," I took one nipple, feeling sorry I neglected the other, and pulled it to and fro, "Oh, God _yes!_ I could eat you alive!"

All motion halted.

I pouted, pounding inside of her.

"What?"

"That ain't even funny," she was flushed and rashed and her hair even more slapdashed and her hips still moved in tiny circles.

I pushed up into her, "Really?"

She regressed, "Okay, maybe a little."

"A_ little?"_

Coming right back down over me, flames fueled, breath fucking _starving_, she rippled, waved, and I fucked her as vigorously as I dared.

As she seized and stopped I tripped out of her, groaning, holding my dick, trying not to cum.

"What are you waiting for?" she raggedly sucked my throat and hungrily looked at my cock.

I couldn't hardly speak.

I wanted to mark her.

My face ached with the need to spill all over her.

"You wanna' cum on my body." She laid herself out, an offering.

I bit my lip and restrained myself.

Touching her breasts and making a bowl beneath them of her hands, her persimmon lips touched my shoulder and the dick I stroked over her mouth, "Right here, baby."

Finally letting myself go, I thrust against her, my hands to her shoulders, my mouth to hers through gasps I couldn't control and my cock saturated her in thick, ropey cum all over her tits, her neck, her belly as she arched and captured every drop on her skin.

A painting, _paired_, Bella licked her lips of globes of my seed and then shuddered, "_I'M MELTING!"_

I was so completely gone I barely had the wherewithal to comeback, "Ain't even funny, love."

_~~ll~~_

It was only an hour later, but it felt like weeks.

Time was a whore that sped up at her own volition.

After I'd showered, I'd laid out all of Bella's toiletries in my cramped bathroom and shredded a few Hustlers down the crapper.

I packed her bag and put it in my truck.

I brushed her hair and watched her dress.

I wanted to show her I was a gentleman.

Of course it goddamn backfired.

Squiring her outside so we both shielded our eyes from the harsh summer sun, I took her to my ride.

The boys and I'd tuned it up same time we were fuckin' with the Bronco yesterday while the women were talkin'.

Blinded by shafts, hopefully mine, Bella blinked and asked, "What's this?"

I tore up a weed or two with the toes of my boots, "My goin' out truck."

Chrome detailed, diesel driven, stovepipe exhaust… my Ford F2500HD that hadn't seen the light of day for months.

"We've gone out," she lambasted me as I lifted her up to the cab.

_This did not bode well._

I slowed my stroll to the driver's side, "So, I'm in the outhouse?"

"Well, it seems you owe me a date in your Sunday Best truck, baby," she pointed before buckling her seat belt.

As if I was capable of crashing.

Our drive to her house was silent apart from Bella's arm outside the window, whifling the wind… and her murmurs, "Damn Dasher and Chelsea and 'goin' out truck'…"

_Bella was jealous._

I sank my pleased grin and shifted to park and managed to cop a hearty feel and lethal kiss before making it abso-fuckin-lutely clear, "Only woman who's been in this vehicle before you was Rose."

"Oh, that's it, Mister!"

Bella grappled with the handle and blundered against the clean-as-new leather seats.

Hauling her to me, I crossed my arms beneath her ass and sat her back to the steering column, "Not like that!"

"I let Bubba take her out on their first date in my truck."

"_Hmmf," _she spluttered.

"He'd wanted to make an impression," I went on.

"_Huh,_" she said.

"As I do now, Bella. You know?"

Relinquishing her envy, she let me give her a good grope and a long kiss before opening the silent, well-oiled door.

"I get off at five."

I made ahead of her and held the front door open, "I'll be there."

Her lovely face looked all tired and familiar and erotic and killer, "It's a date?"

Her tits were still not to be ignored, so I squeezed them and snuck the warmth from her mouth one final time, "Yeah, love. It's a date."

_~~ll~~_

_Because I didn't give a shit, I pulled up and parked right in front of the locally run CARTA minibus. What the hell the other three had been up to in the hours between me watching Bella eat, eating Bella out, getting' rode furiously by Bella and giving her a ride home, I couldn't fathom—__no one__ lived that fucking far away from a Super Walmart-but here they were just about to walk into the cool warehouse._

Jizz took the measure of my pristine diesel, "Where's the Bronco?"

Em's head whipped round fast enough to give him whiplash, fucker would probably take a detour to check out the neck braces in the pharmacy area, "You took Bella home in The Ford?"

Watching the heat from the superior engine block lift up tendrils of incandescent air, I shoved my hands in my pockets and swallowed a grin, "Yeah."

"_Mmmm, hmmmm." _Before she could get a word in edgewise, her jabs up my ass sidewise, Jazz murmured an aside to the Pickpocketing Pipsqueak, "Pick me up a box of toothpicks, baby."

"Stim-U-Dents, I know, lover man."

He squeezed her so hard I had to remember she was unbreakable, not like Bella.

Bubba waited until Alice strolled off down the aisles, discreetly stealing lip gloss, sunblock (what the fuck? As if she needed that greasy unguent to maintain her waxwork complexion), Cutter's bug spray (well, the skeeters here were some hardcore mutant motherfuckers), and a pair of black tights before she rounded the corner and dissipated out of sight. Then he wheeled around, nearly knocking the smiley-go-lucky Walmart Greeter into next week so it looked like his senior citizen ticker was going to peter out, "Brother, you just need to shit or get off the pot already."

"What the hell, shit for brains?" I clobbered him with a left and right and then looked around for one of them portable defibrillators because the greeter-guy was about to drop a turd in his pants.

Jazz chose to chime in, leaning against a square concrete pillar, making a fair dent with the back of his boot hitting it, "You can't deny you're emotionally constipated, man."

"I shit you not, you two, lay the fuck off," I growled.

"Dictator."

"Dickhead."

"Pol Pot."

"At least I don't think I'm touching cloth all the damn time," I hissed.

Suddenly Bubba grabbed his stomach and moaned, "You just had to go and say that, didn't you. I don't think there's enough fiber in them possums and water moccasins."

Shuffling into the main aisle, he caught sight of the Heinous Hobbit and bellowed across the acres and acres of foreign-made, lead-laden, impure, cheap-as-fuck goods, "HEY, SISTER! Get me some Metamucil and some of that Kaopectate while you're at it!"

While the greeter with his meter tickin'-out collapsed on a bench strategically placed next to the McDonald's fried-shit smelling kiosk, a middle-aged and then-some couple of hicks were quietly ignoring us as they as they debated the pros and cons of a display of remote control caddies 'As Seen on TV'—I thought that had to be some kind of conundrum or subliminal marketing or some shit.

The little housewifey with her feathered mules paired with denim cut-offs and leather-tanned wrinkly cleavage asked her husband, a big, scruffy, scurvy lookin' bear of a man with a twinkle in his eyes and a tuck of bug-juice bulging out his bottom lip, "Do you think your maw would like this here for her birthday?"

Leaning over, the man placed his hands on the stand until it groaned under his two hundred and fifty plus weight, "Ah cain't believe you just used the word 'like' and my momma in the same damn sennance, Angel."

_Shee-it, if that was an angel then I was goddamn glad I was barred from Peter's pissant pussified gates of Heaven. I'd rather be up to my neck in gators and hellfire and devils than meet the likes of her in the afterlife._

_Think fast, Eddie._ Tired of Junior and Bubba's vexing dueling banjos inside my head, I went to the only place I knew to change the subject, apart from pontificatin' on 'Good Cooter', that is.

"What about that Nikki Haley, eh? She beat out Henry McMasturbate for republican govenwhore candidate."

They stopped funning at my expense. _Fuckin' right they did._

"Yeah, with the scandal already surrounding her and her alleged affair with Will Fucks-Folks she might even provide more entertainment than Guv-Goes-Way-Down-South-of-the-Appalachians-for-some-De Janeiro-Jimbubblies," Jazz nodded.

"Is she not the spittin' image of swiney Palin? I swear to fuck, with sow-purse Sarah her 'veteran'," I had to stop so I could get a handle on my laughter, "senior bitch-in-charge-mouthpiece… y'all there's only one thing worse than the Volturi."

"I know it," Bubba wittered, "the brutal brunette, false-faced antichrist, anti-democratic duoof Palin and Haley."

"Apparently Paw got a call from Palin herself a couple weeks back, refuting the allegations her gal pal and gubernatorial candidate had slept with everyone _and_ their mother, brother, friend, cousin, neighbor, and uncle so she made John Holmes look like John the Baptist," Jazz mentioned.

I chuckled, "Well, them ladies gotta' stick together, I'll give 'em that. But it's a goddamn good thing Little Miss Piggy Palin didn't get my landline because I'd have given her earful. Hell, I'm a friggin' vampire with plus-20/20 vision and even _I_ couldn't ever see the likes of Russia from the mainland those times Bubs and me went up to the Denalis."

Chortling, we moved along the rows, lookin' down each in search of the Robber Bride. Em guffawed and remembered, "Oh, y'all musta' missed the old news in the Cunty Courier, a little reader comment about Darlin' Nikki. Went somethin' like this:

_I'm voting for Nikki in the Tuesday primary. I like to see them—Jakes, GreSHAM, Amelia Earhart Bauer, even ol' Foghorn Leghown McMastuh—on the run, squealing like the porkulis they are. She's the only candidate with a brain. I couldn't give a rat's tookus about her personal life. C'mon ladies, don't tell me you want to condemn the rumored fast girl in the room, and burn the witch. Remember the movie 'Carrie'? I think we've found our prom queen._

"Carrie, huh? Now was she referring to the part when all them buckets of blood gushed all over her, or when the 'Prom Queen' locked the gymnasium doors and killed all the students?" I shivered. "Fuck me, if I wasn't worried before, I certainly am now."

Elbowing me and spying Alice three rows away, Jazz said, "We could always discuss Senator Lindsey Graham."

I faked a yawn, "Oh yeah, _yadda fuckin' yadda._ He's rumored to be gay. Sur-fucking-prise. With a pansy name like that it's no wonder. It all comes down to 'nurture or nature', right?"

"And besides," Bubba grabbed some Dora the Explorer bandaids and pointed at Jazz, "takes one to know one, Pecker-lovin-pipe-cleaner."

"Hey, darlin'," Jizz hugged Alice and escorted her towards the doors, "What's your haul?"

She started passin' out bits and bobs like she was the neighborhood Candy Lady and it was Halloween every damn day of the year before we even met the thick, hot, South Carolina stew outside.

"Real subtle, fuckwits."

Turning around, I stamped back to the McFuckin' Old Age Pensioner who'd about recovered from our earlier antics only to look as if he was about to respire again; his blood racin', an attack of the angina coming over him. I slipped him a couple bills-one hundreds-and calmed him, "Just put that in the till, my man."

Like it was a country store in the Old West and not some twattin' trillion dollar conglomerate.

Em already had his ass parked against my Ford, shoveling rounds of Pepto Bismol in his mouth like the pink pills were tabs of acid.

"Home, Jeeves."

"Get in, Cheesedick."

"Can I drive 'er?"

"No you cannot fucking drive her," I started the guttural engine and felt its vibrations in my 'nads, "ever fucking again."

"And before you even start: No, you ain't ever takin' Rose on a date in this truck again either."

Bubba whined, "Why not, Indian Giver?"

I took a deep breath, "Because, Kemosabe, it has Bella-smell now. And that shit's far superior to manufactured new car smell. And I ain't gonna' let it get loused up by your girl."

He slumped down in his seat, "What're ya' listening to?" Punching the play button on my state-of-the-art stereo system—the FilthyFido'sWolfmobile had nuthin' on my ride-the cab exploded with Joe Perry making his guitar sing.

I was no longer jealous of that fortissimo of frets; I'd proven I could walk the walk and talk with my cock, hell I could write fuckin' haikus and sonnets with my dick when it came down to it.

"Oh yeah, Sweet Emulsion," Bubba bobbed his head to the tune.

"Asshole, it's _Sweet Emotion," _I cranked it up so the people stopped beside us at the red light shot us a glare.

"Yes, indeedy, so it is. _Gotcha_, you cunt," Em declared. Then yelled over the whammy bar howling from one speaker to the next, "Oh, and by the way, _Edward,_ Maw's been askin' after you."

_Shit._

I had him dial up Esme on my Blackberry because, _whatever_, I was driving and shit.

"It's for you," he held the phone out and laughed out loud as we both heard M'Esme already talkin' me down.

_Fuck._ _What'd I do now?_

"I'm headed out to McClellanville in a couple hours, sonny boy, and I want to see you," she huffed. "It's been two days and you missed the Sunday munch and I'm not just your washer woman, _Edward_."

Bubba slapped his knee while I beseeched, "Aw, Maw. Not the McClellanvilleCousins! Please don't make me go out there."

"Don't you get lippy with me boy," she harangued as I hung around the curve of Hungry Neck Boulevard.

"But we're supposed to be good lookin' and stuff. That clan out there's just plain _wrong_. Cross-eyed, snaggle-toothed, cross-pollinating with the bad stuff. Hell, _shit_, sorry… ma'am," she was silent, and I could picture her raised eyebrow coupled with her uplifted smacking hand, "but they're misfits. I mean, Viagra Vernon! Need I say more?"

"Why, you little pisspot, you're cruisin' for a bruisin', and I ain't even laid eyes on you yet." Her voice softened, "You got five minutes to get to the Bluff, boy, and don't give me no guff."

I watched the speedometer top out as I raced towards the outskirts of Mt. Pleasant.

Dust, rubble, maybe even a rabbit or raccoon or squirrel or two mashed beneath my tires as I roared down the dirt road to the creekside house on stilts.

I kicked Bubba out and locked the doors.

He pouted and asked, "Can I drive it now?"

I looked at him like he had a screw loose, "No. What part of 'never' don't you understand?"

"How am I supposed to get home?" he whined.

"Hoof it, fucker."

"I heard that, Eddie," Maw called from way up on high, like she was fuckin' Mary or something' up above us on her raised porch. "Hey, Emmett, you tell that lovely Rose of yours I need some help with my computer-net."

Summoned for an audience with Maw, I shrank back when she met me at the top of the two-tired eighteen-foot high steps at the screened-in porch. Handing me a warm glass of blood, she took my hand and hugged me to her, leading me inside and setting me down on her cream-colored settee so I sloshed a bit of my drink on the cushions.

Still waiting for her infamous knuckle sandwich, I tried to rub out the blemish, but she stopped my fiddling and hushed me, "Don't worry, son, I got me some new stain remover. It all comes out in the warsh any old how."

Sitting next to me, my affectionate mom who was just as likely to crack me with a wooden spoon had the weirdest beatific smile on her mouth.

She clasped my hands and drawled, beaming at me like a huge, fat, happy bit of sunshine, "I heard tell you took Bella home in the Big Truck today."

Creeping up my skin like a blush, toxin raised my color and I looked away, "Ain't nothing, Maw."

Her fingers whispered over the hair at the nape of my neck, and she patted my leg—soft, sweet Esme—then she cuffed me, "Don't bullshit me, boy."

"_Ow!_ That hurt!"

"Shut up, or I'll give you somethin' to cry about," she took a straw from her apron pocket and stuck it in the congealing brew on the coffee table, moving her _Southern Living_ bibles out of the way.

"Oh, Jesus and Jehosephat," I raised my drink and shielded it from her next blow.

"I said zip it, Eddie." Taking out a remote from one of her other pockets, the pinafore nothing more than a toolbelt to housekeepin', she started some kind of soothing classical music up.

With her fingers around my upper arm and her looks blissful again, Esme wondered aloud, "Took your Bella out in the Sunday Best… now, if that ain't tantamount to a love declaration…" She pressed her hands to the left side of her chest and sighed, "Be still my heart… _once more._"

In an attempt to remain under mother's-own copyrighted radar, I sipped my cocktail and kept mum.

"You've come a long way, baby," Maw dreamily suggested.

_Huh? Was she quotin' a damn Virginia Slim slogan?_

I suspected she was half-baked on the baccy by this point.

But her eyes were sharp and clear.

"You might as well just tell her you love her, sweetheart," she ruffled my hair and soothed the fracture she'd caused earlier.

I frowned and floundered and wanted to flip my mom off, "Love? What? No," seriously, I was floored—couldn't they just wait, give me a minute, spare me a few more lectures? "Sure, I have feelings for Bella, and she's a tremendous fu-"

_SMACK!_

That stung, a bit.

"You need to stop your pussy footin' around, PDQ, Buster," _shit, had she and Bella been in touch?_

"Don't be so crude, you little prick," I bit back my snort, because a small weed I was not. Esme was doing that unblinking, too much thinking thing again, and her mind messed me the hell up:

_Where to have the nuptials? Hmmm, Wide Awake Plantation? Mama Brown recommends it as her mammy's former place of work. Where that purty little girl from Cruel Intentions got married… what was her name? Reese Witherspoon.__ Of course. Maybe not though, that didn't work out so well for her. Alhambra Hall! Old Village, scads of old money…what'll I wear? I'll have to look through my baggies for some jewels, lord knows Carl spends enough on those bits of antiquery, OH! What will that black-bearin', ball bustin', béchamel skinned enchanter wear? Wonder if I could talk her out of black, just for the day. Maybe even talk them two into a double wedding? OH! A triple wedding. Oh my heart. If only we could get that handsome sheriff to get rid of his pornstache, now that'd be a fine thing._ _I'll just give that gal Cacky a call, the wedding planner-_

"You will not!"

She ceased her internal prattling and I held my mom against me, in apology, "I'm sorry, M'Emse. I didn't mean to startle you. It's just…this thing… and everyone has their nose in it… and I just _need to be-_"

Maternal pride. That's what it was. The curve of her lips and the sanction of her look, "I'm not asking for a shotgun wedding."

"Mom," I hugged her tightly, "Just let us figure this thing out, okay?"

"Do I need to remind you," I expected a blow, instead M'Esme pinched my cheeks, "_You belong, you are worthy, you are loved._ And it ain't like you're getting any younger."

What the cunt with the chicks getting all emotional today?

She snuffed and took out a handy pack of tissues from one more pocket of her pinny, even though she couldn't cry.

"You love her?"

"Oh Christ, not you too."

"I asked you a question, Eddie," she tossed her Kleenex to the waste paper basket, "and you better answer me."

_Damn._

"Maw, I cain't say that to anyone else afore I tell her, okay?" That ache. That fucking wound. That emptiness.

Would it ever be cured, complete?

Towering over her, I asked, "Am I dismissed? Because I gotta dash."

I feared for The Smack as her features darkened like rain over the bone-dry crick, "Dash? _Dash?_ You ain't two-timing Bella with that Dasher girl are you? Because I _will_ make you wish you'd never died."

Hugging her to me, I couldn't help but laugh, "No'm. I got me a date."

Her eyes cleared, "With your girl?"

"Yeah." I smiled and jiggled my leg, itching to get to my truck.

"Well, boy, what the hell are you waiting for? Scoot!"

Jumping off the top step, I landed fleet-footed to hear Maw yell, "Grab y'all's laundry from the garage, and you tell that Alice thanks be I don't have to do Jasper's no more."

Bowing low, I blew my mama a kiss and checked my watch and timed the sun and figured I had a good hour.

Enough time for a shower and a fresh change of clothes.

Before I picked up Bella, _my love_.

_~~ll~~_

I could man the fuck up.

Hitting the clutch, I corralled the jitters in my legs and watched the immolating sun try to get a foothold through my tinted widows.

Yeah, I fuckin' had my Downtown Ford tinted, had to protect the leather and all.

_A date._

Clean slate?

Bella was always that.

_Love declaration? What in tarnation?_

I couldn't take her to Sullivan's Island, just a half mile over the turnbridge from Mama's because the foundling, founding forefathers had passed a ban on whistlin' (if that decree included birds then I was all for it), because… _well_… I felt like whistling right about now, and fuck if any town council of cunts was gonna' tell me what to do.

Parking round the back, I nodded to Caleb who was callin' a gentle, "Soooweeee," to the sows bein' bred for a pork pulling.

He nodded towards the rear door of Mama's where Bella was taking her leave with a holler back and laughter at Mama and Rose and her faithful diners.

Right then and there I realized I had to do the proper, southern thing and send Mama Brown a thank you flower arrangement for her most excellent choice in uniforms.

From her smooth, long legs to her insignificant shorts, I followed Bella's fingers untying the bow of her shirt to lower it over her bared midriff, "Allow me."

"As you wish," Bella joined her hands at the top of my ass and frayed the loops and played with my belt.

I kissed and moaned and licked and sucked and tickled her tummy with my cold fingers as I undid her shirt flaps, and then the three buttons up her middle.

"Baby, Caleb's out here!" she admonished me, but my dick took no notice.

I looked over my shoulder to see the green bean man, shadowy as the night falling about us with its silence, givin' me the thumbs up and then looking decidedly away, "So he is, and I don't give a shit."

"Now let me see those tits," I opened her shirt and almost came, "That's one of them… _goddamn, Bella_… that's not even a brassiere."

Her fingers lined the cups of lace that hardly held her in place and then lowered for a tweak or two of her nipples until I wanted to see her take herself in hand and show me all her naughty nighttime secrets. "It's called a balconette, Eddie. I have one in black, too, remember?"

Sneaking my index fingers inside each cup, I dove into those balconies to feel her foxy nipples. Straining, tore up, I held my hands aloft like a criminal, "_Fuck._" She left her bosom exposed and saw my truck, "Your non-church-goin'-Ford? Twice in one day? You tryin' to tell me somethin', Eddie?"

There was so much pastel in the setting sky I had a hard time makin' her out against the backdrop of dusk. A storm cloud passed and rumbled, black, bearing down, heavy as death.

"Yeah," I breathed, taking her wrist, watching the bounce of her breasts as she walked beside me to her side of my truck. "I know I promised you a date, but, _fuck._" I raked a hand through my hair and opened the door and reached across to start it and crank the A/C in the one hundred degree heat. Lifting her legs inside, I tucked Bella in, "I'll take you wherever you wanna' go, but I don't give two shits where that is. "

I closed the door.

She rolled down the window.

I leaned my forearms to the aperture.

She kissed me with her tongue trapping mine.

"I'm over it, babe."

_What? Over what? Me?_

She giggled as she picked up the horror in my expression. "I don't care what we do either, Eddie." _Okay._ I leaned forward again and face planted to a crinkly brown paper bag, one that didn't contain a hard bottle of liquor.

All shy and cute, she checked her seatbelt and dialed down the air and pursued anything other than looking at me, "I bought you a sercy. You know, what with the Luxury Hollows Home Owners Association takin' up."

"You tryin' to tell _me_ something, love?" I mimicked her before I tore open the package. A t-shirt: _Mess with me, you mess with my trailer park._

Perfect.

Ebullient, I jumped in the trunk and ripped a seven foot wide moat about the place, knowin' I'd be back in the dawn hours to make good on Mama's lot.

We were cruising down the road. Headed just about anywhere, I honked my horn, swore, smiled and raised almighty hell, and in between it all, I said, "I love you."

"What?" Bella querulously asked.

"I LOVE YOU!" I hollered, just as she closed the windows, turned down the A/C and paused the tunes.

All that surrounded us was the sort of atmospheric silence that only followed a blizzard, maybe a hurricane, or death.

A wake.

Awake.

"Pull over," Bella sussurated.

Dust and rust and storms and fumes and plumes and puffs and dirt and grit, and _I wasn't just goin' to leave her at the side of the road._

I broke the door handle and bounded out and breathed heavily and touched the hood, its heat enveloping me.

Almost like Bella absorbing me.

Absolving me.

Camouflaging my beast in humanity.

Peering through the windshield I couldn't tell if she was about to puke or laugh maniacally or smile or pass out.

Fading, I hung my head.

Then I felt her.

Out here, in the willy-wacks, against me.

Then I heard her.

"What did you say?" my shirt vanished under her fingers.

The muscles of my back felt the plush sensuality of Bella's front acres.

Her smile crossed my spine to my shoulders and down to the lowness of my jeans.

Needy as hell, I only gave her my mouth, to the side, making out, "I love you, Bella fuckin' Swan."

"'S'what I thought you said." She swatted my ass and gladdened against me once more.

"You naked, love?" I craned my neck and caught a glimpse of breast and shoulders and waist and long hair and took my first deep breath in weeks.

"Nearly," she answered and I chugged and choked and spluttered and wanted to tell her again and again, _I love you._

From behind me, her hands found my pants and the concealed cock-hard weapon within, squeezing my shaft and tallying just how long I was.

Raggedly, I asked, "You got somethin' to say, or are you just going to tease me until I cream my jeans?"

Her titties tilted into me, she was on her tiptoes, she was proud, _as always_, "I love you, Eddie Cullen."

I grinned and felt relaxed…and randy.

As I turned, her fingers traced over all the new sinews displayed.

I leaned her against my Sunday Best, popped her tits out of that sexy excuse for a bra and sheared the shirt off her for once and all.

She propped up, her heart pounding, her smart mouth unflagging, "These our vows?"

I smirked and annihilated her shorts.

"I'll take that as a yes," she answered her own rhetoric.

Arching, Bella gave me her pussy.

I pushed my hands up the insides of her legs, all the way from her ankles, _my fingertips trailin', _to her knees, _steaming harder, _to her pussy, _teasing her with the lightest touch._

"OH! Goddamn Hell and all the saints, I love you, Eddie," yeah, she just wanted me to finger her.

So I did.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

Panties, gone.

I bared her lips, suckled her hips, looked longingly at her folds.

Opening her with two fingers, I dipped my tongue to the fragile frills framing her cunt.

Moaning, cussin', _"Yeah, fuck-yes, moooore,"_ Bella put my neck in a WWE-worthy chokehold between her thighs.

_Pluck-pluck-plucking _her snug mound, I ducked deep, hit her clit with my nose, rubbed her lanai labia with my chin, rasped her inner thighs with my jaw workin' as my tongue wreathed, dipped, snacked in and out… _in and out until I couldn't hold back._

Hands pledged to her hauled Bella right fuckin' over my face.

My hair, my ears, my lips… all was fair play as Bella sought any handhold. **.**

I dented my Best Truck, moving against her furiously.

_Deeper, harder, faster, thrusting, licking, loving until her thighs became one with my face and dampness ran in a sexy flood against me, pushes, pushes, pushes, pulses and I traipsed her bright flesh and she didn't even have to touch me._

But when she did, she yanked me up and ripped open my jeans and set to work on the top two inches of my cock, squeezing my tip and thumbing the crepe skin just below and slicing over and over the thumping ridgeline.

One hand playing with both her tits, my other fingers making a funnel up into her tight, wet sex, Bella broke and froze, the birds in the forest fleeing with her, "Oh _fuuuuuuck!_"

I came like a spigot, cracking the sultry air that enveloped us, "I LOVE YOU!"

Her honorific hips continued to roll over my fingers.

_Laughing, lusting, situating Bella back into the truck and tugging the seatbelt over the flapping shirt I'd dressed her in, so I wasn't quite so tempted to dive into her cleavage again on the drive home._

I swayed.

"You want me to drive?"

I tossed her a heavy keyring jampacked with brass I'd had tooled at Royall Ace Hardware: the Bronco, the double wide, my bike, my truck. "Keep it, it's yours."

We switched sides and I folded my hand over hers on the stick shift, marveling at her ability to take this monster in hand.

I watched the outcroppings of strip malls and neon signs pass.

"You ready for this, Bella?" I asked.

Shifting up a gear, she handled my truck just as she did me, "Yeah."

* * *

~Uh, yeah. So, _he gave her the keys to his trucks and trailer! _Holy fuck, right? Oh, yeah, and he finally said, 'I love you.' *le sigh* Reviews make Eddie so happy he's about to bust out of his Carhartts. Do It Now ~

**Another huge A/N (What? I've been offline and missin' y'all!).**

There were some references to some of the _Rebelward Without a Cause_ outtakes here, as usual. Y'all, if you're not reading them, you are really missing out on a huge part of _Dead Confederates_ as we explore the other characters. Before the next chapter, it would behoove you to read _From Beautiful Bride to Southern Siren_ (Rose POV) and _Just Bubba's Luck _(Em POV)_._ I'm just going to say, there are some hints and ideas about what might be coming up in the story, as well as a treasure trove of fuckin' fantastic history on the DC characters.

Eddie won Small Fry second place in the Google Snorts, which is fine, because if he's gonna' be a fast food item then y'all know he's a damn Big Slurp. Please don't ever call Eddie 'Small Fry', it makes him want to rip his clothes off and show you his unforetold family jewels. And, _thank you so much for voting! _Giggle Snorts is going to branch out to host humorous TWI fanfic, so take note:

gigglesnortawards(DOT)mmmboptastic(DOT)com/index(DOT)php

Golden Lemons: well, ladies, you know Eddie didn't win a damn thing last time…he thinks he's pretty hot fuckin' stuff in the sack: go and nominate your fave authors and stories in some deliciously naughty categories, noms end 7-12:

www(DOT)goldenlemonawards(DOT)com/

Twific AH Awards...congrats to the very talented winners!

Fandom Gives Back: there are some incredibly smart women participating for one of the very best causes, childhood cancer research. Please go and do what you can to help alleviate the pain and strain on these sweet littluns.

www(DOT)thefandomgivesback(DOT)com/

Cheers,

Rie and Eddiex


	23. Swamp Rats, Mozart, and Mayhem

My eternal gratitude goes to my two betas: grammar-guru and editor-with-attitude, Vanessarae and back-massager and blank-filler-inner extraordinaire, Viola Cornuta!

Thanks to the Next Gayle King for nights spent on the Bluff with Maw (in the flesh). Hugs to a heartbreakingly wonderful woman and writer, winterstale, for her jump-start with the loup-garou. Love to the DW broodmares (bwah ha ha!) for their unfathomable support—me and Eddie met six of them earlier in the month and it was a rip-roarin', 'giggle-snorting' ;) good goddamn time! To all you who are Eddie's FB Femme Fatales…_yeah_. Really. Y'all are twisted, wild, wondrous, wanton, and bewilderingly all over this story and both of us adore the hell out of you! (Lindz, there's a little 'giving finger' in here too).

Did I mention the **Dead Confederates blog **yet? If you want to catch all the songs, the fan-art, the teasers and the chapters in full living color and sound, go check it out, you'll probably want to move in because it's 'Dead sexy': deadconfeds(DOT)wordpress(DOT)com

Disclaimer: The DW, the southern Cullens (not to be confused with those other Sullen Cullens), Mama Brown, a heap-lot of sassy Rebella…these are all mine. SM's Twilight, very much not mine.

~~Okay, _really_, I mean it this time: Buckle Up, Y'all~~

**Chapter Song: **_**Risk, **_**Deftones**

www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=xHYmbQGBdEs

* * *

**Swamp Rats, Mozart, and Mayhem**

"Harder. Push harder!"

I groaned and grunted and grabbed and shunted.

"C'mon, baby, use that vampire strength I know you got in you. _Give it to me_."

She was breathless and flushed and strained and goddamn _dicktatin'_ me. And I was gonna' to _give it to her._

Fuckin'-A right I was.

I pushed my fucked-up hair outta my face, the strands were splitting my vision and, "Jesus Mother Fuck'n Cuntwhore Christ!" if I _pushed_ any harder, her fragile frame would be through the wall.

Standing tall, I curled my fingers tightly around, _squeezing,_ and shoved in with only half my might and shouted, "Bella!"

Shifting, easing in, and under.

Bubba sniggered in the background, from his rocking spot in the corner of Bella's new bedroom at Rose's.

A creak, a moan, the bedsprings near coming away beneath my hands, and I scooted forward and made that resistant motherfucker come to rest.

_And that was just her trunk, situated under her bed, in Rose's cottage. Bella's new abode._

"Goddamn, Bella." I felt like I was sweating.

"What?"

"What what?"

"You're being all mopey and stuff," she started tucking sheets over her bed.

I had to upgrade that shit from a single as soon as fuckin' possible. Although, close quarters were good; _very good._

I licked my lips and shooed her away, making double time, makin' her bed. Grumblin' all the while, "Well it ain't no double wide."

Bella giggled and bent over her suitcase.

Bubba took up what looked like a damn knitting basket and started crocheting an _afghan?_ At hyper-speed spread with the most garish colors—and thank fuck I was part colorblind.

I blinked.

He rocked.

I raised an eyebrow.

Bella tipped further over into her luggage, and I wanted to lunge at her, fuck her, destroy every shred of clothing she was unpacking with my teeth as I split her pretty swollen pussy with the head of my cock as she splendidly raised up to bite at my lips, raise her hips, rip at my hair, shoot me with a glare, and then fuckin' push back with that luscious derriere.

"What?"

So quiet, I thought he was whisperin', but no he was tryin' not to think it, _"Damn."_

Following his bead I saw just what he was talkin' about… Bella bent over… her ass…"Em! Fuckin'-fuck!"

"What? That's what I call some cushion for the pushin', right there," he didn't even have the wherewithal to look chagrined.

I raised one hand and one finger. My _givin'_ finger.

"Dopey."

"Dopehead."

"Dumpy."

"Cranky."

"Crappy."

"_Sneezy."_ Jizz walked in lookin' like he'd just ridden a mustang across desert sands, when all he'd done was carried another ten boxes from his Ford to the back bedroom.

"Eat shit," Em came back.

"Eat shit _and die,_" I wisecracked.

The Maudlin Maddening Moppet was pottering around outside, probably huntin' down some neglected slave cemeteries known to be in these parts of Mount Pleasant, just this side of Sullivan's Island. I had a new appreciation for S.I. I might not be able to whistle there, but fuck it. DHEC had just passed another new injunction against dogs bein' allowed on restaurant patios.

_See ya Kibbles and Bits Jacob._

Charlie had said, "You're not shackin' up with that boy, are ya'?"

As if I hadn't been standing right there. _As if his Charleston County issue shotgun could kill me._

I'd smiled pleasantly, hiding my snide remarks from PoPo PawPaw.

"Dad!" Bella had scolded. "You know I'm moving to Rose's."

He stood and quietly snicked his safety on, "That Rose, yeah. She's a nice girl." _Bit cold, though._

_If only you knew, Detective Dickhead._

Bella had been busy in Scummerville with Billy-Sue Pernell.

I'd been slightly manic.

Maw had advised I get a job.

_Right, like 'Puttin' it to the Pud' weren't a full-time position._

The Volturi, those sensationalist mothergrubbers. The shape-shifters, those shaftin' mixed breed mongrels, Bella… Chelsea, Caius, Mama, _Beetle Juice Alice…_

I was fucked.

And I hadn't been fucked enough.

No how.

And I had gone all friggin' _mopey_, because… _fuck it_… we were in love.

I linked Bella to me, my hands, my eyes…my cock.

She swayed towards me, every whisper of her flesh makin' me tremble with her approach.

Strewn across the room was everything she owned.

Bella owned _me_.

I started unbuttoning my jeans.

Bubba sneezed, as if foretold by Junior… as if he'd taken on Alice's second sight.

She began to take her shirt off.

It got caught on her perky nipples.

Bubba coughed.

"You wanna-?" Bella read my damn-fool mind.

My glassy eyes repeated hers, "Yes."

In the periphery of my vision I saw Jizz motioning to Bubba with his toothpick in an obvious semaphore reading: _Git the fuck out now, braw._

Bella's fingers drew up my crotch.

Right now I was grateful; I didn't care if he wanted to dip his pole in someone else's blowhole so long as he cleared the cottage quick snap.

I snarled, "Get the fuck out."

Bubba busted my balls, "But I'm two thirds through a complicated row." He held up a tightly crocheted blanket in jagged stripes.

Bella went to her knees.

Bubba hushed, "Well, I am kinda' bushed."

Junior grabbed the knitting kit and Bubba.

I heard him jigglin' the toilet handle on his way out with a mutter, the john was sissing and running, _"World's finite resources."_

Resourceful Bella tied her hair back in some kind of crazy, kinky knot, and I knew right then I was gonna be in for a good ride.

Hard and horny, I breathed a long sigh of relief when she popped the buttons of my jeans, "Thank you."

Her hands inside my pants were so goddamn erotic, and her giggle made my dick pound insufferably, "Such nice manners, baby."

I winked at her and cocked my hips forward, "More breathin' room, if you please."

"My pleasure," her breath melted to my briefs and made my shaft about ready to shear through the black cloth. With palms to my hips, fingers sliding into the indents of muscles, Bella pulled it all down , lowering her head to watch the progress of my soiled denim to floor.

The full weight of my boner bounced almost painfully in the air, leapt up to hit my abdomen, and then settled like a perpendicular mast, a drop of venom sittin' like a pearl of honey at the tip of my cock.

"Ooooh, Eddie," Bella licked up my inner thighs and linked her hands to my ass, "That for me?"

I mutely nodded.

I knew she wanted to keep her tresses out of the way, but _fuck me_, I needed somethin' to hold on to. And I wanted to make a mess, all friggin' over her. Slippin' the strands free, I gasped as her tongue curled around my head, then like a curious little pointy thing, it wandered dedicatedly around the tough ridge, down the under vein, and _finally_ sharpened into the tiny pursed slit on top of me.

"_Ah yeah, fuck,"_ I pushed my palm to the nape of her neck and gathered that cascading curtain of hair between my fingers, slicing, separating: the perfect mantel.

After she'd thoroughly slurped a good many inches down my dick and sat back on her heels to suck my head with her plump delicious lips, she moaned away from me, "Manners, Mister."

Around my wrist, silting to my sinews and strained vessels, her swimming locks crawled like water snakes and her tongue—_oh, Goddamn!—_her tongue fiercely smothered me. "_Ah-yeah-fuck-please._"

Looking up, smiling over her mouthful of me, she mumbled, "Better, Eddie."

Tunneling lower, Bella shifted to my balls, a wide hemisphere guiding her mouth. Teasing me, she opened up just below me, underneath the fat fig hangin' above her. Wide, welcoming, engorged, her lips held still. Shaking as another bullet of toxin beaded out, ran down, rode off and hit her cheek with a cool splatter, following the gorgeous facets of her face to the corner of her mouth. Thick lashes lowered and she licked it up, spreading my cum over her lips as, by mistake, her tongue hit my nuts, and I jolted forward, and she wrapped her hands around me to roll one sac in her mouth like the most pungent, firm, fruit.

Groaning and almost out of control, I moved closer.

Caressing her, the side of her face, touching her nose, my cock stroked Bella. She pulled in a deep breath and arched her neck to look at all… of… me.

"Such a nice cock," she whispered.

"Thank you," I grunted.

"I want you."

"I know."

My hands over hers. My length at her mouth, her chin, her neck, and we stroked together, down to her tits and back up... slowly. _Slowly_.

_Open._

_Yes._

A terrific shiver rolled her hips until Bella's pussy pressed against my calf. Getting herself off.

The noises of wet suction resounded. Just this, just right, just... all of me, inside her mouth and moans and sighs and murmurs and pleading for more and more and more.

I pulled out, my face a carving of need.

Bella looked up, flushed and ready, "You're welcome."

My nostrils flared, my dick wanted to tear into her.

Leaning over, I pulled up my jeans.

"What are you doing?" she frowned.

I tugged my pants over my hips, settling them low, keeping them open and my cock out.

"You can thank _me_ later," I made sure she was good and wet and writhin' and ready and told her, low and gritty and greedily against her throat, "Grab hold of somethin'."

She shivered as I looped her back-to-front, bent her forward, made sure she was braced against the pathetic bed frame that probably wouldn't last one round.

And her tits swung down so I had no choice but to rub my thumbs over the pert, silky points, then grab with a quick pinch and twist so her back bowed to just the perfect angle.

_For a good fuck._

Cold metal buttons, velvety thick cock, rough denim… sensory overload, I felt the hot moistness of her cunt hold me as I sped inside of her.

Her head hung down.

I lifted up a bit and thrust again.

The tab buttons bounced against her clitoris.

She stamped her feet and threw her head back to me for a searing kiss.

Rasping metal, rapacious dick.

The bed dented the wall.

Rumbling and husky, I demanded, "Not holdin' on good enough."

"_Jesus-goddamn-goodballs, damn you!" _Bella wrenched the bed back and I was impressed with her strength.

It wasn't _enough_.

I grabbed her wrists and held them right over her ass with both hands, slantingherup and back like a figurehead on a galleon, tits to air; prow, prowess. To bare those magnificent breasts.

I tested the peaks of her nipples and fully penetrated her, treating her to my cock. Releasing Bella's hands, I steadied her by her waist, pressing my thumbs to the divots above her rear, and smacked into her, making sure to strut up and down her slit with each stroke, then languidly fell back.

She was shaking and grappling with my neck and my ass, crying out a steady stream of blasphemy and vows, propelling me faster and harder until I felt my 'nads clamp up and her pussy clench down and all between us was a throbbing flood of heat and liquid and frosty jism and a tight, atomic bomb of total mass destruction of flesh and ecstasy!

"_Oh, goddamn-fuck!"_ I wrapped my arms around her and tucked us both to her bed, the fucker was still standing, _miraculously_.

Rising up with her forearms to my chest so her boobs about hung in my face and her puffy nipples danced to mine, Bella grinned, "Wow. I've never been thanked like that."

Mesmerized by the display of flesh and a disheveled Bella in front of my dazed face, all I could say was, "Huh?"

She slapped my cheek lightly and kissed me, relishing the smooth depths of my mouth and the texture of my tongue.

Moving to her earlobe, _done for_, I crooned, "Me either, love…me either."

_~~ll~~_

_Fiddler crabs go crunch, _I thought as we bumped over the rutted dirt track to the Bluff, squashin' the little scuttling monsters on the way.

Bella was keeping a close eye on every one of them things that met my tires, "Aw, Eddie, can't you dodge them or something?"

I snorted, "Well, I don't really care to," she looked aghast so I hastily amended, "'Sides, you seen all them? Must be mating season for the crustaceans or some shit."

We came round the bend, and Bella blinked at the spread before her.

Of course, when I'd asked Bella if she was ready for this, I'd been referring to her meeting Maw and Paw.

Now we were here.

Guess you got used to this shit, but it was sort of majestic.

"Oh my, it's pretty, Eddie," Bella smiled.

I joined our fingers on the console and grinned, "Not near as pretty as you."

"Ain't you just a sweet talker, gorgeous," she leaned up to kiss me fair and square on my jaw.

I squired her out of the truck, Sunday Best of course, and we made our way to the elevated house.

Bella slapped me in the chest and pointed, "Is that a coffin?"

"Yeeeaah," it was. An old pine box, now one of Maw's creepy planters filled with creeping potato vines and bountiful lantana and three fat fuckin' hibiscuses.

"Mmmm hmmmm, okay," she marched forward.

I caught up and led her to the under-garage where I pressed a button outside a door.

She screwed up her eyes, "An elevator, Eddie?"

"Yeah?"

"For when they're Senior Citizen Vamps and stuff?"

"Well, no, love, that won't happen."

"Do y'all really use it?"

"Nah, usually we just jump," I raised my hand up.

"You jump." She measured the height from ground to raised porch.

My face was plastered with an arrogant grin, "I could _jump you_ if you want."

"I bet," Bella gurgled and pushed against me, then passed, "I'm a little bit scared of heights though."

"Well, I don't want to worry you any more, babe, but just one thing, okay?" I backed her into the elevator and cornered her.

"Lover, when you push up against me like this… there's only one thing I'm thinkin' about, and it ain't your folks," her fingers gingerly touched the muscles of my throat, and I gulped.

"Just don't ask Maw about her age."

"Why ever not?" her hands left off of me.

_Best learn to shut my mouth when my woman was touchin' me up._

"Uh, she's good southern stock, least here and now, so that just don't do, and truth be told, she's a little bit touchy about it."

"Just how old is she?"

I coughed through it, "One hundred and fifteen years young."

"Do I even want to know Carl's age?"

I bit a nail almost clean through and shifted round so I was in the corner and Bella was supine against me, "Probably not."

Her raised eyebrow wouldn't be put off. "Three hundred and seventy."

"Holy crap! Talk about robbin' the cradle!"

"Oh that ain't the half of it. Carl's essentially younger than Maw… he's only twenty-three, and she's twenty-six. She's a cougar. _You're catchin' up_."

"You did _not_ just make a crack about my age," She grabbed my dick and squeezed and maybe she meant it to hurt but all it did was make me wanna screw. In the elevator. Hell if I wasn't just like any other country boy at heart, _or whatever._

"How's that saying go? You're only as young as you feel?" I kept her hand in place and moved my hips with her.

She sassed back, "How old does that make you then?"

"Nothin' but an almost man, _Ma'am."_

She tightened the ring of her fingers, "Oh, you are so asking for it, Eddie Cullen!"

_Yes, yes I was._

"Damn, I need a drink," she stopped coppin' a feel, and I groaned.

_No shit._ Nervy as a young stud on his first assignation, I smelled Bella, curled my arms about her, tryin' to situate myself and settle us both. I'd never brought a girl home before…and she wasn't just any girl. Bella was… Bella was… _fuck._ Bella was my entire life.

The lift dropped us on the main floor. I opened the cage to the pristine interior, everything polished: the rick-rack and bric-a-brac, the lights muted to offset the simple display of paintings by lowcountry artists. One of 'em was of a rabbit. It was all El Greco and shit.

_I gaddamn hated rabbits._

The churning garbage disposal got Bella's attention, "What's she smashin' up?"

_Fucked if I knew. Bones to dust?_ "Um, leftovers?"

Bella sagged against me and whispered, "She ain't gonna make me another batch of your crapcakes, is she?"

Laughing, I held her, "No, _Miss_, I do believe Maw's a better cook than me. She usually wins the blue ribbon for her pies at the Ladson Fair."

Paw strolled in, clapped me on the back and took a little bit longer than necessary, _in my opinion_, looking Bella over before he folded her in a loose hug, thinking to me, _"I ain't hurtin' her, am I?"_

I shook my head and toed my boots to the floor and watched Bella blink as her smile spread.

"So, Bella, this is my… this is… well hell, this is Carl. My dad," I gestured to him and back to her as I brought her waist inside of my hands, "_Dad_, this is my Bella."

I couldn't have kept the shit-eatin' grin off my face for all the world.

"Pleased to meet you, Sir," Bella lifted her skirt up just an inch and curtsied.

"And you, Bella. We've heard so much about you, darlin'" he winked and motioned to the porch, "C'mon now, join us outside for a cocktail."

As Bella watched him ahead of us, she softly spoke, "He's a bit like Errol Flynn meets Clint Eastwood, ain't he."

_Really?_

Paw squared his shoulders with pride, 'course he'd heard my girl.

_Git._

"Esme, they're here!" he shouted, and an excited squeal came from outside.

All happy and high as a goddamn kite, Maw met us and just positively glowed at Bella. She took first Bella's hands and then her elbows and then her shoulders and then folded both their small bodies together.

I do believe if tears could have fallen from my Maw's eyes, they would have.

Carl blew into his hanky, lounging against the two-by-four railing.

I stepped aside and watched.

"Thank you, Bella," Esme lulled.

Moving away, her hands met Bella's cheeks, her arms, her fingers, before clutching her own.

"Ma'am, I know we met before under different circumstances, when you welcomed me to the parish, but I feel like this is the first time I've seen you." Bella bore her gratitude gracefully, "Thank you for welcoming me to your home. And such a beautiful house! The setting, it's just… _amazing_. I mean," she leaned forward as if I wouldn't be able to hear her, "_You know_, Eddie's bachelor abode hadn't prepared me for this."

"Oh honey, don' I know it! I can't tell you the number of times I have _begged_ that boy,"—_Uh, yeah, 'That Boy' is standing right here—, "_to clean up. To get serious." She looked over to me, "Though he was far too serious before we got here… _he's better now._ I never thought I'd see my Eddie like this."

I looked pleadingly at Carl to break up the Summer's Eve female moment before their hormones toppled us.

Thankfully, he got what I was sayin'.

"Do the Dew, Eddie?" Carl had a tall glass filled with the thick, sick, yellow syrup of Mountain Dew. He didn't drink it, _naw_, he just liked the color and the fizz.

It came as no surprise that Rice Krispies and milk were also a favorite uneaten dish in the house…on account of their Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

"Think I'll just have a brew, if it's all the same to you, _Pops,_" before I fuckin' spew, that is.

"Bella? What can I do you for," Uh, hold up, _gramps_, you ain't gonna' be doin' her for nothin', I felt like shouting. "Esme's on her third, no… maybe that's her fifth, vodka tonic. And they're stiff doubles," he had a nefarious gleam to his eyes, thinking, _"Now that woman on one too many vodkas is hornier than a she-devil"_, "But we'll just keep that between you, me, and the trees."

"I'd sure love a Firefly vodka if you have it, Sir."

"You like that Wadmalaw sour mash, do ya'? Well now, I know you're underage and all, but as long as the Sheriff don't find out, I trust you're in good hands with my son here," _was she ever…, _"One sweet tea vodka comin' up."

Sidling up to Paw, I helped him with the drinks.

He sent me his appraisal, _"She sure is a good looking girl, Eddie. You done good."_

I had… I would. I tried.

Carl chawed on his imported black market Cohiba. We watched the sunset, its last rays studding our skin in quartz-crusted glintings, me and Bella on the porch swing, enraptured with each other. The melodious sounds of Mozart wafted out through the opened French doors, a pair at either end of the sweeping screened-in platform that overlooked the horizon of salty marsh.

"So, you're really vampires," Bella asked.

"Yes." Carl spat some baccy to the floor and Esme glared at his expectorate.

"Well, y'all look good for your age," _Hot damn, that didn't take long._

"Bella, honey, I'm just a spring chicken," Maw made out before she switched up the music to… _ABBA?_ Oh, Jesus, not this.

"Oooh, have you seen Mama Mia?" Maw was animated as she started dancing, bringing Bella with her to the middle of the platform, "I love me a good musical."

The songs changed and the light fell darker, and them damn swamp rats came out of their hidey-holes.

Carl and Esme got out their guns and stood at opposite sides of the doors, taking aim and pluckin the motherfuckin' wet rodents off.

"Eddie?" Bella wondered.

"Target-" I began to explain.

"Practice," Carl finished, his grin going for hangdog as he and Esme continued to plug away at the furry creatures of the night.

"Don't y'all usually hunt with your hands," Bella breezily asked, as if this was no more than a normal Sunday tea.

"Depends," Maw squinted down her barrel and took a pot-shot, "Gotcha, you little rat bastard."

"Aren't you _hungry _for some of that?" my girl continued.

A packrat met the rafters of the sky and nosedived down like a long-tailed, transmogrified pelican, and the sight did something to Bella, made her look a little discomfited.

Truculent over Bella's new expression at the sudden slaughter, I brought her to me, time for the truth, "Love, we drain the blood of animals… _I'm a killing machine._ I've had humans. And if I didn't have this nuisance of goddamn conscience, I'd probably do it again." Lowering her eyelids, she became more tense. _She needed to understand._ "We use our hands, our _teeth,_" I snapped near her ear, and she jumped, "We use guns and bows. We revel in our supernatural armory as much as our man-made weaponry. _This is who we are._"

She slumped.

I shrugged.

The crack of gunshot petered out.

"But these hands," I suggestively traced them up her inner thighs, "This mouth," I whispered wetly up and down the side of her throat before swallowing against her collar bone, "This tongue," I touched the tip of mine to hers, peeking from the corner of her lips, "Are only those of a lover when I'm with you."

I hardened.

Her droop changed to a voluptuous languor of body.

Glancing once to my parents silhouetted against the ridiculously low-hangin' moon, she spooned against me, "I'll take it."

My cock lengthened.

She smirked.

Esme set her safety, adamantly didn't look at us, and invited, "Let's adjourn to the sitting room, Bella-dear, leave these men folk to it."

_As if that was gonna fly._

I tagged after them.

Maw heard a herd of miniscule buzzes and swore-_sort of,_ "Oh, Scotch! Them skeeters got in here… hand me the Dirt Devil, lover."

_Because sometimes Raid just didn't work._

While Maw Hoovered the ceiling, Paw adjudicated on the right nozzle to use, and I steered Bella away from Carl's designer leather armchair, because I remembered Maw telling us all about them double shot gunnin' on it.

_Probably had spunk stains._

Maw sprayed the rest of her Raid down the Devil's trunk and, satisfied, she blew across it like it was a smokin' gun prior to handing it back to Paw to holster on the wall mount in the pantry.

Bella walked about.

And found the armory.

All their munitions.

A Winchester that dated back to WWI and other antiques.

Esme crept up behind us, "The South will rise again."

_Soon._

Bella fondled a couple of the firearms and seemed to particularly like the Winchester paired with my own.

In the main room, now that the aerosol bug killer had cleared, we rejoined Carl.

And there was Esme's prized painting. Bound and determined that it was an original Charles Fraser, she'd first discovered it in the attic and set it on the dining room table.

She'd carted it around downtown's snooty galleries for appraisal to no avail.

It'd been upgraded from the first home she'd made for it—a bathmat and towels—to bubble wrap and acid-free tissue paper.

She didn't let it out of her sight nor leave it in the Merc alone, like it was a wee baby, prone to blistering in the sun.

"Antiques Roadshow?" Bella looked at the landscape.

"I hope so," Esme coddled the thing.

"Grub's on!" Carl tore us away.

It was chops or some other slop.

We drank and Bella ate, and I adored her hearty appetite, although it made me worry for her Newborn year… if she'd agree to that, eventually, _soon._

"So, how long you been together?" she put her napkin to the side of her mouth, exactly where I'd cum before.

"Eighty-nine years, but we first met in 1911, and I never did forget the kind, handsome doctor who set my leg." She got up for a refill then came back to stand over Carl, holding his face in her hands, "I was sixteen years old, and you were my savior even then."

"Oh Lord, that's a long time!" Bella exclaimed, "Don't you ever get bored?"

"A significant part of vampire mating is the eternal renewal off fleshly vows," Carl camped his wife to his lap.

I shoved my chair to Bella's and wished I could put her on my knees for a little jiggle and bounce, or a lapdance at the very least, "What he means is, the sex gets better'n better."

Maw gave me the stink eye but kept mum on my porny proclamation.

Instead she began, "We don't count the years anymore," and Carl finished, just like any old couple, "We're living in months now."

They held hands and wouldn't look at us, their eyes only for each other.

"Weeks, _days_," I churlishly added.

"I think I'm done, Miss Esme," Bella pushed her plate aside and swiped her lips with the napkin.

She gripped my hand and watched the firm lines of gloom and doom settle in my expression. Watery and deep brown, her eyes saddened, and she sank her face to my neck, breathing me in, feeling me against her mouth.

I quietly caressed her hair, its waves more staticky than the heated air outside.

Clearing his throat, Paw asked, "What's for dessert?"

Maw stood and massaged his shoulders, "What would you like, dear?"

His eyes lit up and his smile broadened, he clutched his chair, and I think he even bounced, "Please break out the Peeps, darlin'."

Peeps? "Paw, it don't matter how much slang you sling, you're still just a honkey. You ain't got no peeps.

"No son, PEEPS—the delicious, non-nutritious, sugar-encrusted marshmallow chicks and bunnies,"—_fuckin' bunnies again_—"from about three Easters ago that are hard enough to pound nails but still smell-"

"I got it, Carl," I halted his junkfood junket, because I sure as hell knew all about bein' hard enough to pound nails.

Bella had started lickin' my neck.

Now she was outright laughing.

Esme smacked me as she walked by, "Don't be such a little pee-pot, Eddie."

_Pee-pot? She couldn't even come out and say piss pot?_

Later, clambering up the stairs—I'd been sent off to give Bella a tour of the keep—it was all I could do to maintain an inch of distance while I watched her bottom above me.

She looked back to catch me staring at her ass and snapped her fingers in front of my gawping face, "So let me get this straight. Miss Esme's all about the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and Carl's into all things _Magically Delicious_?"

I stroked her thigh, "Sounds about right."

I took her to Carl's study first… it was such a damn mess we could just squeeze in the doorway and stand on the perimeter amidst stacks of papers, piles of books, and rows and rows of jars filled with the twisted little fetuses of unborn animals.

A drab oil painting to the side of the door had Bella shuffling sheaves aside so she could get nearer, "Who are these guys?"

I pointed to Leatherface, "That's Aro," then to the Night-of-the-Living-Dead-Morose-Comatose lookin' dude, "Marcus," and then sneered at the third with his robes trimmed in ermine and his eyebrow raised in a superior expression, "Caius."

"That Caius, he sure does look like a camp-vamp."

"Yeah, a real super-tramp."

"And that's-"

"Carl."

She inspected my sire in his girly outfit of frockcoat**, **ruffled shirt, and pussy-pantaloons**, **"He really used to hang out with those dudes?"

"Yeah," I massaged the back of my neck… fuckin' felt raw from the scratch of Bella's fingers when I'd plowed into her earlier.

Hurrying her along, away from the fetid fetuses and the portrait of poison, I gestured, "Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, _upstairs powder room._"

At the last, I flinched.

Confused by my reaction, she asked, "What?"

"What what?" _Shit, not this again…_

"You're lookin' pale."

"Huh," I etched along my jaw with my blunt fingernails and took her in from her peeping toes to her curvy hips, the notch of her waist and the fuckin' hot swell of her knockers. The aura between us thickened as the scent of sex near but perspired between us, "Ain't I always?" I backed into the cramped room, with her almost on top of me. I closed the door with a click, kept one hand on her hip, and brought the other to her earlobe where I spun around the softest skin.

Shallow of breath, she simpered, "Baby, you know you're dead sexy, and I'd love nothin' more than to open your shirt and run my hands up and down your chest to your back, _and right into your jeans to your ass_," unfortunately, she did none of those things but grabbed the hair at the nape of my neck instead and hissed, "But you didn't answer the question."

I groused—ignoring my dick's scream, 'Fuck us, fuck us now!' "Last time I was up here I was thinkin' of you… a couple months ago."

"Before we even went out?"

Sheepishly I nodded, "Yeah."

"Baby, that's so sweet," she gave me some _positive_ reinforcement when her palm finally worked into my jeans, and she groped my ass, rubbing and squeezing and moving closer to my 'nads, "So what happened?"

_Fuckin' fuck fuck!_ I rested my head to the wall behind her and shut my eyes, I'd answer any damn thing just to keep her hands on me and movin' in the right direction, "I flushed the toilet."

"Uh huh?"

"Only reason for a vampire to pull the chain is when he's been _yankin'_ _it _and needs to dispose of the evidence."

"Oh!" Understanding made her press her head back so her nose ran across my chin, "Unless you're Bubba of course."

"Of course," I grazed her face and pulled her figure against me, moving in slow circles as our breath labored and we moaned, and our hands hunted for more and more and more flesh, "Maw weren't too happy."

"Well, I'm a human woman with cause to flush, so why don't you just show me what you got?" She pushed me away, "And make it good."

My dick thudded in my pants—_she wanted to watch me jerk off?_

I stumbled to the vanity, then gathered myself, then grinned and got _cocky, _"Don't I always?"

"_Mmmmm_."

I took off my shirt. Her eyes shaded.

I opened my jeans.

Her stare never moved from my fingers unhooking, opening, reaching in, pulling out.

"_Huh_," she gasped.

I quirked my head and looked pointedly down her body.

I grasped my cock and gave it a full salute.

Palm to the head. Thumb and index finger seizing, trapping toxin and bringing it back down.

"_Shit," _she sighed, shifted, swirled her hips to get her own jeans down her legs.

Shaking out her hair, she looked glorious.

The flat of her hand tracing down her tummy looked so goddamn erotic.

I started beating off faster.

She raised her foot and rested it beside me on the sink.

I sank back and groaned.

Around and around, my fist over my dick, her finger to her clit, plucking, pleading, pleasurin'.

Gently moving her hand out of the way, I watched my thumb disappear inside of her.

And then appear to part her lips and rotate over her billowy button.

Between her index and middle fingers, my tip was gripped and her own thumb sliced across the slit.

Our foreheads met, our breaths melted, our lips opened and tongues touched.

"Shit!" I hoarsely cried.

"_Shhhh,_" Bella giggled.

Two fingers in her, two hands enclosing me, two mouths too busy panting to kiss.

A hit to her rough little g-spot, a tap-tap-tap to the tensile bridge between my nuts and my ass, "_Shit!" _we both roared.

And laughed, and trembled together with our pants at our ankles and wet fingers and shaky hands and arms hugging.

"That was _not_ quiet."

"No, no it wasn't, Bella," I cleaned her off and helped her get her clothes right again.

"They'll know."

"Yeah, sorry love, but yes they will," I opened the door and we held hands down the staircase.

_Oh Mary-Mother-Fucker._

There they were.

Seated together on the porn-chair.

And they had the same Just-Been-Finger-Fucked look as me and Bella.

M'Esme nodded to us, "Oh, to be young and in love."

"_Forever,"_ I muttered.

"So help me, Eddie, I will put the Fear of God into you," she feinted as if to belt me, "Don't you pressure your girl."

"I won't, I mean," my eyebrows furrowed, and I scowled and made my way as close to Bella as I could, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

Her fingers to my lips shushed me, "I know, baby. I know."

Carl put his elbows to his knees, "Why don't you pull up a chair and give us the skinny on the wolves, Bella?"

"What do _you_ know about them?"

"Ladies first," he handled.

"_Hmmmph."_

We sat down.

Bella looked at that damnable rabbit painting.

"I've known the Blacks since forever," she captured this far off look, a certain remembrance that tugged up her lips and made me jealous over the side of her I could never see… Bella as a young girl. "Well, it's no secret the Gullah, like Mama Brown, have ties to the Cajuns, and the Cajuns have their place here. Ever summer Jacob and Billy would come here; Billy and Charlie met up at the fish hole and then the waterin' hole.

"I remember the first time my daddy came home after he'd seen one of them change! His eyes were frozen wide and his face washed out of all color. Well, _now_ I know the Blacks and the Clearwaters had come across two vampires and they couldn't stop their molting."

Bella stopped and watched us, "I guess…_was that Rose and someone else?_"

_Garrett? _Carl thought.

No.

"Nothing came of it, but that was when the Blacks came out to us, as it were, as werewolves. Now I know a whole lot more of their lore, since Eddie told me what you all are.

"I was only eight then**. **Jacob hadn't phased yet, he was just getting' ready to enter first grade… it was the older crowd still… Billy, and Harry-Leah's long-gone dad-he was the Alpha of the pack.

"So as the years went on, more and more of them summered here; I'm not sure if it was because what had started out as an ancestral vacation place became a hotbed for supernatural activity or not. But when Katrina hit, they had no place else to go.

"Of course, they'd already been exiled from their rightful home in Acadia, way back when. That's where they started on this continent, the Blaquieres, the Cuilleriers, the Ulrys. Intermarrying with the Mi'kmag aboriginals of the area, the French colonists became more and more Native Americans. They tried to be Switzerland between the French and the English up there in Canada amongst the land-grabbing wars but ultimately got unhoused from their own soil. In 1764, during the _ante litteram_, the Blacks, Clearwaters and Uleys journeyed to Dominica."

_Half-breeds, I knew it._

Maw set another vodka in front of Bella and disappeared.

"That's when the family became a den, for they were almost overcome, once more. This time by the _soucouyant._ And they weren't going to stand down this time… it was like some freaky, genetic timebomb went off in them! The _soucouyant_ was a vicious vampire, entering households through cracks and keyholes, shedding her skin and becoming nothing more than a ball of fire to wrangle her way inside. And once inside she sucked and gorged and fed and made her victim's skin her own."

Bella downed the drink in three swallows. I could see her gagging on make-believe now brought-to-life with each mouthful.

"Black arts and witchcraft and sorcery, the succubus wanted the Acadians' fresh blood. They became the loup-garou we know and decimated her but not before vile accusations and necromancy hexes streamed like foul screeches from the soucouyant's bloodthirsty mouth: she named the shapeshifters_ jé-rouges. _A Haitian strain of werewolf of her very same essence, they drank from the blood of humans beneath the full moon and leaving the half-dead corpses to mutate into such animals themselves."

_Soucouyant, succubus, loogaroo; we were all life-suckers cut from the same cloth and strewn across different countries. _

"It was ironic that they traveled then to that place of Voodoo itself, New Orleans and its surrounds, only to cross paths with, _Oh my hell!"_ Bella blanched, "The loogaroo? Is that, is all this… are you?"

"We're related, yes. But they're a wilder breed, Bella," Carl cautioned.

I _needed _to hold her.

"Bella, please, let me," I opened my arms and sighed in relief when she crawled over me and touched my forearms and let go of her fear enough to accept my comfort.

Shaken, but trying to breeze through it, she snuffled against my neck, "We used to hear a ghost story at bedtime, something to make us stop squirming and getting up, 'Git ta sleep or da loup garou is gonna get ya!' 'Course we all laughed at it, once we knew." I held her as tightly as I could, trying to erase the shivering up and down her body. Quietly, the tremor of terror worked into her voice, _"There's nothing funny about all this anymore, Eddie."_

"There never was," I kissed the top of her head and plaited her hair and kneaded the small of her back.

She sat back and fingered my sideburns, "You know they're completely aware in wolf form, right? They're just humans in a different cloth."

_Furry fuckin' beasts of a macabre costume that could kill us._

"Bella, I know they're just as much your family as Charlie, but your friends, they are the only other beings out there who have the power to tear us limb from limb."

She denied, "They wouldn't, Eddie. Not now, not you and yours. _I won't allow it._" A perfect kiss upon my lips made me want to believe her, "Maybe I _can_ save you."

Carl spoke up, even though I understood he was looking for loopholes, trying to make sense of all this, "It's true what Alice said about Aro. Not even he can read them, not like you, son. Not that he's come across this particular species before, bein' a mixed breed and all,"—_no doubt, Mutts!_

"And it appears Leah is the Apha?"

"Heck yeah, she is," Bella gloated.

"And she's imprinted on Sam?"

"Yes. I guess, much like you and Esme, Alice and Jazz, Rose and Bubba," she rolled her lips to my cheek, "_You and me, lover._ They're bound beyond the material, yeah."

Information and stimulation overload. I was overheating and needed to shoot another load, preferably _inside_ of Bella this time.

She had other ideas, "Now, Sir, why don't you tell me about the Volturi."

_Atta girl._

"You want to know what Aro wanted with my venom."

"Yes."

"Well now, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say Aro,"—_Arsehole—_"would be usin' my toxin to create a super-race, since I'm essentially immune to the call of human blood,"—_but not foodstuff with a shelf-life of twenty years, mind you-,_ "Or a vampire bio-weapon, something to weaken those strong enough to resist him, like-"

"Eddie." Bella coiled around me, as if her body could protect me from the coming tyranny.

"Possibly," he frowned. "It'd be genetic warfare, like Agent Orange and 'Nam."

"That doesn't sound good, Sir."

"We could always get George Dubya on the horn, see if he could blow up a few more factories," I wanted to remain hopeful.

"Or we could go stealth bomber," Carl warmed to the subject.

"Now, I thought Bubba was y'all's stealth bomber," Bella colluded.

We busted up and Esme bustled in; _what the hell had she been doing?_

"Enough of this talk about my prodigal son and Carl's venom… the family jewels; I got some real gems for you to take a gander at, Bella dear."

_Oh good Christ._

She jangled her _gallon_ sized Ziploc, and I felt Bella seize up in a fit of laughter.

"_Don't do it,"_ I advised, tickling the backsides of her knees.

These were no mere trinkets or flea market baubles. Tokens of familiarity and acceptance, in a plastic baggie no less.

Bella was _in._

I wanted in… _her._

A-fuckin'-S-A-P.

Plunking the heavy thing to the table, Maw hemmed and hawed a bit, "I already offered a sercy to Alice and Rose," she fiddled her fingers and swung away. _Shit, where were the Kleenex? Oh, right, in my outhouse. _ "I never had no girls of my own, Bella, and I'd be delighted to pass something on to you, too."

Surprised and touched, Bella slunk off my legs and squatted with Maw next to her as they untangled the rich pile of gems and precious metal.

Carl signaled to the door downstairs, and I held up a finger.

I wanted to see our women.

"Oh, that's a dress ring, dear. Carl smuggled that out of Italy on our last trip," Esme crowed delightedly.

I stooped over Bella's shoulder to see her choice.

Pleased with herself, Maw thought, _"Gonna get a ring on her finger one way or t'other, boy."_

_And that was enough of that._

As Carl and I bolted down the stairs to the garage, I still heard Esme nattering on, "Now, there. That's a nice snug fit, Bella. If it gets too tight all you need is a spritz of Windex; simply spray your hands and remove the offending rings. Works like a charm ev'ry time! Remember though, you have to use brand name Windex because that fake product don't work…"

I twirled the knob on the old, black radio to 98X. Shinedown's _Simple Man_ was playin'. Seemed eerily appropriate.

"Whaddya suppose they're talkin' about up there?"

"I s'pect Esme's complaining about how I managed to get the cable stuck on Playboy TV's Hollywood Babe-A-Thon. It was still playing when her lady friends from the Red Hat Society showed up for tea. Mind you, _the lady_ didn't protest too much when I put some of them moves in action later that night…" he got a dreamy look to his eyes.

_Christ._

"That or they're comparing toys. You know, your Bella sent Esme a nice little thank you note for the _care package_." She would have done, my girl. "And of course, Esme ordered herself some new apparatus at the same time. Son, I gotta tell you about this one…"

_And I descended into another level of Hell._

I was about to cut out of there rather than hear more discourse on parental intercourse when Paw grabbed my shoulder, "Just wait a minute."

"You're not gonna give me the wrap-it talk again, are ya'?" I whined.

"No but-"

"Fuck me, Carl, don't tell me you're hearing wedding bells too," I griped.

"No, I think I heard-" Carl pulled me back inside.

"Just because we're in love don't mean we _have to_ get married," I belly-ached.

"Shut up! _Damn_, boy, she's really got you all discombobulated, ain't she," he quieted and listened.

I stopped breathing but to ask, "What?"

Deadly serious, Carl muttered, "Vampires. Not our own. And-"

"Jesus Fuckin' Christ, Carl, what?" an immediate terror and the inherent call to fight rooted me to the spot.

"_Wolves."_

No sooner did I feel my hair stand on end and heard a snarl rip from my lips, than I was faced with two vampires… a man and a woman.

She spoke, "Hi, Eddie."

In the moonlight, her hair looked as wintry as her normal surrounds in Alaska; a creature more pale than the leached tundra, glacial and pewter. Her companion was swarthy, wearing the legendary tripe-skin of the Eye-talians, although the Guido-Smelling-of-Human-Chorizo was more a hybrid: a Spaniard with an Italian address.

"Irina," I curtly nodded and ignored the hand she held out for a kiss, which had been our normal greeting when Bubba and I used to carouse up Northwest with her and her Denali sisters.

"Who's your _friend_," I sneered, my incisors showing, sharpened, ready to pounce, bite, _slaughter_.

"Your manners are lacking, Eddie. But I'll overlook it," she gestured to Poncey de Leon, "This is Eleazar."

_El Sleazer._

"And your company leaves a lot to be desired," I glared, preparing to take him out with a shearing of his greasy head from his shoulders and igniting his oily black hanks.

She gave a cool smile and met Carl's careful hug, "Where's my Rose?"

_What the f-? FUCK! Rose and Irina!_

"You're her dam," I accused, my finger brandished, my rage giving way to blinding wrath.

"Of course. How was it you never knew, talented boy," she smirked and sent an impossibly disorientating look to El Creeper. .

"Fuck that," I spat, "Where's _his_ robe?"

Unblinking, I had one thought, _to get Bella away._

From the _Godfather_ and Godmother.

Of course he smelled her first, attuned to the roiling blood of humans as nothing more than victuals. Bella had come down to the open-sided garage and was staring wide-eyed and worriedly at the concrete-skinned couple.

I understood Eleazar's eyes were brimming over with hungry red, he licked his copious lips, and the skin across his ancient cheeks stretched with the wide, delirious grin playing across his mouth, "A human girl?" He leaned in to breathe more deeply, "How utterly… _curious._"

Scooping her behind me with one arm, I held the other out against him, a blockade of solid vampire flesh, my teeth were razors, my nails were talons… Channeling the monster I was, stripped of humanity, I readied to let loose an almighty godawful motherfuckin' _world of hate_ on El Geezer.

"Don't you fuckin' move," my cheeks trembled, my nostrils flared, I heard Bella's heart speed up, creating an even more tempting pounding of exquisite blood.

Seeing the chink in my armor, noting the way I pulled Bella against me, my _amour,_ Irina boldly stepped closer and inspected my woman, "So, Eddie, if you didn't know about me and Rose, I'm guessing your mortal paramour here has no idea about you and Tanya."

A small scatter of punches hit my kidneys, my shoulders, fingers pulled my hair and tweaked my earlobes in nothing more than a move she must have picked up from her own mother, Bella screeched into the silence, "Tanya? Now who the hell is Tanya?"

I wove into her, embracing her, creating another layer of defense, knowing Carl had placed himself between us and The Cuntquistador, "You got your Chelsea-"

El Creaky smothered a condemning chuckle in the background, "Yes, we still can't believe that either."

"And _Cacky, _and _Dasher_, and now I've got to hear about _Tanya?_" She stomped her foot in a fit of pissiness, and I lost my own footing. Here we were, faced with a Volturi and Bella was… _jealous_? "Yeah, suppose she's a vampire too, right?" Bella shoved my caging arm aside and looked to Irina for agreement. The silvery-haired originator of Rose agreed silently.

Chagrined, I beseeched, "Bella, _love_, this is neither the time nor the place to-"

I manacled her wrists before she could break her hands against me, raised to strike as they were, her eyes saturated in a boiling craze, "Not the time?" Her voice rose hysterically, "I come down from a pleasant evenin' with your centuries-old folks to find you facing off with not one, but _two_ vampires who are presumably out to get us and then hear about you _gallivanting_ with a bunch of slutty succubi!"

_Shit! She scared me more than Paco the Taco!_

"Don't you tell me the right time to have a completely irrational jealous fit about _my goddamn man!" _On her tiptoes, her lips were raised up to me in such a temper I just wanted to fuck her mouth with my tongue until we ripped off all our clothes and screwed like demons in front of every-fuckin-body!

She felt my huge, untamable cock and even while she hemmed her hips against mine, she berated, in a softer tone, "Damn you, Eddie, how can you be thinkin' about sex at a time like this?"

Brushing against her hair, gathering her rear, I placed my lips right to her sweet little ear, "I'm always thinkin' about you, and sex with you, and life with you, and _afterlife_ with you."

"I kinda hate you right now, you know," she sucked my lips slowly.

"Good, because I kinda love you right now, you know."

A booming voice broke our ill-timed lovers' interlude, "What the fuck's this?"

Bubba.

I pivoted back to the couple who were on the verge of becoming Krispy Kremes.

Suddenly Bella was sandwiched between me and Em.

_All the better._

"Irina?" Bewilderment scrabbled his voice.

I smelled the summer rain that was Rose as she approached and swept by us, folding Irina into an innocent embrace, "Irina!"

Catching up, Rose cut menacingly toward us, "Irina?"

There was a snuffle then a shuffle and some long breaths and paper crackling.

Bubba, hyperventilating, into the brown bag that held the t-shirt Bella had given me. I wrestled him for it and tossed it back to my truck, "Fuck, Dude, you're gonna get germs all over my shit. Get a hold of yourself."

"You, _you?"_ Rose was trembling.

Bubba backed off, leaving us unprotected at the rear guard.

Irina moved forward, "Rose? You've mated with _Emmett?_" She sort of smiled, "I thought I raised you better than that, giving your _heart_ to a gadabout."

Bubba stopped and glared, "She's your creator?"

Rose stood tall, her hands on her hips and her blond hair a whip, "She was your… _your_ whore?"

He spit to the grass, pleading, "Baby girl, it was way before I met you." He attempted a step in her direction, "And you and I both know Irina is not a whore."

Rose's face crumpled, "Was it more?"

"No, honey… _never_, not like us… _never,_" they were nearly touching, a new tension replacing the distrust.

"Well, this is entertainment at its finest, I don't care what the critics say about American theatre."

All eyes were back on the long-in-the tooth Rico Chavez who was still looking toothsomely at Bella. Ranks that had been shattered reformed. Me and Bubba with Bella between us, Rose and Carl at either side.

_I would fuckin' take them down, singlehandedly. This would be my own friggin' Guernica_

All that had loosened in me tightened like a screw to a wrench again.

_Fearsome, feral desire to kill, maim, tear, topple, de-motherfuckin'-capitate._

Both Rose and Bubba asked, in tones so low they could have speaking from the very darkest, reddest, hottest caverns of Hades, "You brought _him_ here?"

Then the cat and mouse began anew, "She knew you were in the lowcountry."

"And you as well!"

"What is she doing with that skanky Spanish Fly?"

"Why don't you tell _me?_"

At the same time Bella screamed, "Enough!" Maw apparated like a goddamn ghostly guardian, "What in tarnation is all this racket?"

And then the commotion exploded.

In yips and monstrosities of fur and gnarly growls and spiny loping eight-foot tall wolves.

_Shitstorm brewin' in a beer glass._

Bubba was thinkin'-singing—_and doing a shit job at it—_'Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?'

I reached back to clobber him against the skull.

The slobbering, masticating mammals formed a ring around us.

Bella relaxed into me.

The dogs pawed at the turf, tearing up giant holes of hard-to-grow-St. Augustine's and trampling a few flowerbeds until Maw clutched the crater that was her chest.

"What the goddamn _Hell_ are y'all doing here?" I roared.

The cacophony was doin' my head in. _I needed to get Bella away._

A vile canter of my lips, a slight tip of my chin and I walked forward.

I knew there was nothing but total demise written all over me by the way Julio-Ingratiating-Us held his hands up and toed away from me, his superciliousness dissipated, "I'm just the talent scout." He looked behind him, figuring out just how fast I could be, if I really wanted to get to him.

I crouched.

He continued to fledge, "_We_ wanted to meet you, having heard so much about you… _en masse._ You know, there's never been a clan like you before."

I assented and persisted; every motion hyper-precise and just this side of controlled.

"The rumors are growing, Eddie. You won't be able to stay hidden here for long," he risked taking his eyes off me for a moment to glance at Bella, "And this—_her—_exceeds my expectations." The lank-haired-Lima-bean had the gall to leer at my woman.

It took nanoseconds for me to read his thoughts and heave him against a live oak; _he had no idea how close he was to death by my hands._

My entire body _screamed_ to kill.

I razed Gay Guevara's papery face against the bark.

Away from us, in the circular luminescence of the bug-light, everyone watched us: Rose, Irina, Bubba, Carl, Esme, the pack… Bella.

I snaked forward, cranked his arms back until the subtle tear of tendons echoed and overtook his whimpers, "_Over My… Dead… Body."_

"Enough!"

_Bella._

With effort, I let go my quarry and jostled him ahead of me, back to the regiment of human, loup garou, vampire.

A new set of snarls deafened me.

"Heel motherfuckers!" This was about to escalate into an annihilation, and I was pretty sure The Pussy of Pamplona and Irina were gonna end up dead, and I at least wanted the chance to kill that Coronado cunt by my own hands, preferably without Bella watchin'.

"That was uncalled for," both Esme and Bella berated me.

"FUCK! Stand down, dogs. Phase back or whatever the shit it is y'all need to do." I watched them shimmer and slake off furand turn into humans.

It looked putrid, and real painful.

Hump-backed shoulders, forelegs, snouts…from nastiness, to nattiness and then..._embarrassment._

_Naked humans._

They quickly grabbed the scant clothing tied about their ankles and dressed.

Jacob, Seth, Leah, and Sam.

And one more.

"We don't hold with poachers," Leah pronounced, and then girlishly jested, "_Pretty boy._"

_Oh fuckin' ass! Not this shit again._

"They're not goin' nowhere," I waved to the two interlopers, "And I need Bella safe, goddamn pronto."

Bella narrowed her eyes and mouthed a long chain of curses at me.

I didn't give a shit; hell would freeze over like my goddamn veins before I put her in harm's way.

"I'll take her," Jacob offered.

_As fuckin' if._ Apparently I didn't want her _that_ safe.

"Yeah, I don't fuckin' think so," _Bilious Bloodhound._

Turning to Bubba, I ordered, "You, take her to the trailer, _now._"

"Aw, man, why I gotta miss all the action?"

A searing defiance enveloped me… it was a thought that I couldn't grasp. It had me spiking right back to extreme vehemence, and the _need_ to mutilate, to rip, shred, wound, _obliterate._

My black eyes were mirrored in Bubba's. He ceased his balking.

More chaos bashed me… _too many of them_.

I impelled Bella to my brother.

I spun and lowered.

They were silently goading me.

Didn't they know… _I would murder for her._ I'd done it for much, much less.

The sinister sneer on my face, the crawl of vengeance inside of my skin, the magnificent, murderous instinct inside of me _craved_ to get… out… now.

"Eddie," she hushed.

_Bella._

Upon her, _too fast, too much_, I stopped short of… _of._

I locked myself down: against Eleazar's starvation, _the pangs of my emotions, the melting of her blood._

Brutal of face, I held her—_too tight, too much._

Our kiss was excruciatingly cataclysmic.

"_Uh! Bella, fuck, FUCK!"_ _I had to move to the shadows._

Her brightness in the light hurt my eyes, they were midnight and black and dilated and lethal.

A hand wavered and then steadied in reaching across glow to dimness.

The silhouette of her sparked a novel desire to demolish.

"You come back to me, you hear?" Her mouth painted in stark sobriety, a thin sliver of hope.

I stepped to the edge of the outline between us, "I love you, Bella fuckin' Swan."

She swallowed and repeated, "I love you, Eddie goddamn Cullen."

A stumble behind me as I sprinted after El Goon and Irina made me fumble, _just for a second._

Dark shapes slapped me like feathers, and I raced, shouting back, "Rose, you're with me."

* * *

~Eddie wants to know what y'all think…he's really fucked up over this; tetchy, testy, totaly wild. Did we blindside you? Much love for the sudden rash of really awesome reviews, keep it coming, ladies~

You should have a good read of the most excellent outtakes on Rose and Bubba ('From Beautiful Bride to Southern Siren' and 'Just Bubba's Luck') before or right quick after you read this. And I _know_ I don't have to tell you to get over to the RWaC outtakes for the latest, right? You'll be tickled, terrified, touched, and turned-on; it's Alice and Jizzper's frightening and fucklicious story by Gasaway Alley and Rowan Moon.

Thanks to Lindz/Ropmaniporn and MsEm for the artwork on the blog for this chapter.

Information on Maw's painter (or so she hopes):

www(DOT)artcyclopedia(DOT)com/artists/fraser_charles(DOT)html

EEEKS! SQUEEES! Eddie has a video! Yeah! Here it is; go on, it's got sex appeal for miles and is the goddamn essence of Dead Confederates:

**www(DOT)youtube(DOT)****com/watch?v=gNqAUDVKS_k**

Made by RMCC (aka Rosalie McCarty) – leave her some love because hell if she doesn't deserve it!

**A word from Eddie:**

Yeah, hey there. I been nominated for **The Vampies** (Golden—_gaddamn_—Onion cat. AKA Best Comedy)! Voting ends August 1st.

www(DOT)kwiksurveys(DOT)?surveyID=KLHJLF_a980722c&UID=2985593982

I've also been nominated for my filthy mouth and original and erotic sexual tendencies in the **Golden Lemons** (Best Dirty Talk & Best Creative Position, or some shit like that). Voting also ends August 1st.

www(DOT)kwiksurveys(DOT)?surveyID=KCOMLN_bd9343f3&UID=1602093106

Cheers,

Rie~


	24. Rock You Like a Hurricane

I love my ladies, Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta! Even when they're evil mistresses ;). Dead Confeds would totally have about ten thousand more ellipses, a lot fewer commas, and an even larger host of made-up words than it already does without them. It probably wouldn't make any sense, either .

Many hugs, loves, rubs, etc. to my lady loves over at the Twilighted DW! Big kisses and naughty thoughts to Eddie's chicks on Fuckbook…he seriously fuckin' loves y'all.

A most awesome number of reviews, faves, and alerts since last time and that makes me bootleg happy! Thank you so very much.

Disclaimer: Well, I just had a thought (yes, I'm slow like that): It's really fuckin' cool that Miss SM lets us do this shit to her characters. So, while I do own this representation, I humbly thank her for allowing us Twilight to play with.

~~Yeah, it's intense. Hold on, babies~~

_Rock You Like a Hurricane_ by Scorpions:

www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=9Me_tXyq_t4

* * *

**Rock You Like a Hurricane**

Crickets, blaring.

I swatted, hissed, squashed, swore until my bellowing bled up into the gathering, heavy clouds, ripping them apart like dynamite inside of a mine. Dervish-like, I ran after Irina and El Sleazer; nothin' but the wind.

They'd disappeared like what's-his-fuckin'-name… David Douchebag Copperfield. Yeah like him. The Dicken's take 'em, like could they friggin' outrun me, I could smell the human gore drippin' out of him like porous sweat; stinky motherfuckin' defiling Pizarro the Bizarro.

Rose's mind was on a Ferris wheel of thought, rotatin' through Bubba and Irina, me and Tanya, Irina and the Coronado Cunt… then endless scenes of her life played backwards in terse relay: _Mama Brown, Irina, Lowcountry, New York, Kill them… I killed him, I killed Royce, Irina left me, Irina and Emmett? Bella. How could Irina do this to my folk? _

_UGH, _"FUCK!"

Concussion, percussive, cussin'… runnin' so fast there was nothin' but the whippet blur of black and noise, clamor, din all cannonading together and melting into a ball that was crushing me.

Compression.

I dropped to my knees and shoved my face in the dirt and saw Bella's eyes and heard her words demanding me to come back to her. Rolling once, I leapt to my feet again, crouching, piercing through… leaving her. I'd almost hurt her. I wanted to kill, in front of her. I would have shown her just how absolutely inhuman I could fuckin' be.

_Enough of this goddamn bullshit._ I was gonna slice my fingers through their flesh, making baritone whimpers and glassy shatters with metal in tatters all over the place. I relished it… I sneered and hunted and curled my lips and smelled deeply and stopped; they'd turned direction, they were still.

_Waiting._

I held up a hand and cautioned Rose, and her bright, burnished, blond braid settled like a mustang's mane… wild shivers danced through her; she was just as anxious as me.

_But she'd drawn Irina here._

I didn't trust her either.

South Carolina's so-called '100 Deadly Days of Summer' was about to reach a whole new level.

I nodded, and together we soared through another fifty acres of forest to the clearing Bubba and I'd made the last time we'd played horseshoes. The giant plaster pillars we used as posts stood at either end of the playing field – we'd borrowed them from the manmade lakeside park downtown and just hadn't had time to return them, between gunning, fucking, drinking, _being_-stumps of oak, pine, and magnolia like midget soldiers dotted all around where we'd blasted through the turnip wood.

Flakes of white chalk silted down like snow flurries from the two columns with the deathly gallop of my throaty growl.

An anvil stood ass-end up in the ground, my last move. One feint to the left and I'd have it in my hand, one half-second more, and it'd shred El Crazy Capitan's slithery head from his neck.

He heckled me, "I might not be able to read minds, _Señor Eduardo_, but I can surely understand that bloodthirsty look." He tsked, "'Tis a shame you don't just give in to _La Señorita__Bella_? But then, the waste of such skill."

Mercurial murderous intent pulled my eyes to him until all my tissue pumped with toxic essence to torture and tear encrusted entrails out length by length, hand over hand, until all of his innards laid in a cold, steaming heap at my feet.

He chuckled, "You are easy to rile, _Caballero_. I was referring to her effortless skill at blocking you. A first, _si_?" I didn't answer, trying to decide whether to strafe to the left or right before I took his arms from their sockets and used one of the soaking crystal swords to behead Irina. "I imagine her blood is tempting; I could feel the heat between you, the pure, undiluted thrill of her scent as you watched her… she is your _cantante_ too? _Fascinating._ And yet you are able to have her as a woman without bleeding her?"

In his curiosity he stepped closer and quirked his head so his eel-like hair swarmed, and the volcanic histrionics of his eyes closed in imagination.

_Bad move, Unholy Guacamole._

I dove between his thighs before he could even open his eyes, pummeling him back to the colonnade and crushing right through it before a grip at my neck threw me off.

_Irina._

_You don't want to kill him, Eddie._

I hissed, "I really fuckin' think I do, Irina."

_Would I put your family at risk for a game? For Aro? For the Volturi?_

I bit through my words, "What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doin'. With. Him?" I didn't know if they were goin' steady or not, but she had to have some serious goddamn beer goggles on to fuck that; somethin' was messin' with her usual acuity.

She shrugged and didn't answer, walked over and offered her hand to the Mad Madrid, "Eddie, is that any way to talk to a lady? To put it in your terms, I ain't seen you in a dog's age, darlin', don't I even get me some sugah?"

_Scary. She sounded just like Mama Brown._

I cut to Rose.

She stood frozen, a sculpture, her stare not to be broken.

_Oh, fuck. The one time I needed ball-bustin' Rose and she was approachin' a catatonic state._

I raised my hand to slap some sense into her, and Irina halted me again, sanctioning, "_Don't."_ She moved around me, "I've seen her like this before."

_Of fuckin' course she had._

As Irina enveloped Rose, I watched. And then I felt _him_ sneakin' up on me, at my back, goddamn oglin' my ass! What the fuck was with the Gay Volturi Vanguard? Not even looking, I blew my forearm back and thought, _"Fuck yeah,"_ when I heard a stand of birch twist and snap around The Un-Straight of Gibraltar. _Maybe he wasn't screwing Irina after all. _Didn't matter.

She brought him here.

And Rose drew her in.

_I did leave Rose. _Her sharp, white arms gathered the stony-still woman to her in a coddling hug. Irina looked to me, her eyes still golden as mine, _I made sure she had Mama Brown first. Rose was my only offspring, my firstborn._

The thin hole in my chest hung open with a new tear. _Years and years they'd been together._

_Bella. Keep Bella safe. Kill them, keep them away. Change her. Have her forever._

Softly touching her monochromatic lips to the one mark upon Rose's breastbone that remained a velvety, shimmery moon of teeth, Irina woke her.

As if it was a button rebooting her, Rose exploded from Irina's embrace, and her eyes shaded from dead neutrality to pure death. In ten moments I heard it all: her history to her present as she was brought back to now… _soft, Mommy, Daddy's happy, sunshine on snow, playmates, she pulled my pigtails so I'm going to trip her tomorrow outside school, he proposed, society wedding, wealthy, princess, wife, babies, my own life, family, pain… agony… he… he… he sawed into me and gave me to the next, and they pounded me open and I bled and screamed and no one came, and I cried until… dusty, dry, dying. I'd rather die. I should die. I'm dirty. No one will want me now. I don't want me now. Dead body, rise from it… rise away… rosy dawn and ice on rooftops… rising… I'm rising… she's so pretty! She's not real, I'm dead, I'm sorry, Mommy, Daddy. I didn't mean to die. I wanted children. _

_Jesus._ My throat clotted with fear. _Is that what Bella would feel?_

No time.

Her stance a standard of offense, Rose spat vitriol, "You've brought disgrace and distrust upon me, Irina."

"I apologize, Rose. That was not my intent," regal Irina bowed slightly, and I was awed… never in all my time with the Denalis had I seen her thus humbled.

She pivoted to me but kept her distance, this woman I'd seen wrapped around my brother as his lover now stood before me as an enemy, "Eddie, _Dorogoi_**, **we didn't want to do anything unmentionable in front of your lady friend back there."

_What the? They wanted to get me away from Bella? For what? Sure as fuck they weren't gonna kill me. _The Spanish Armadillo crawled forward, and I took the heel of my workboots to work him over again: face, chest, crotch, knees… until he keened to the moss and Irina begged, "STOP!"

Insanity worked through me like a rash that made me itch, scratch to _kill_. Deep, long breaths, and I ceased… for a minute.

_I wanted his dying to last a torturously long time._

I kept an eye on Cunto de Mayo while Rose reigned Irina in, "What are you doin' with a Volturi?"

"What are you doing with Emmett?"

Rose curled her fist, and I didn't envy Irina that bitch-punch because I knew she had some damn force behind it.

She wasn't put off, our Rose, "What's wrong with Em?"

Irina smiled, and I was belted with her memories of their time in Alaska, and that shit I just didn't need to see, "Nothing, as you well know, Rosalie. I just hadn't considered it… _you and him._"

Rose unclamped, minutely, as if Irina's approval meant something.

_Her ma'am, her dam._

For a millisecond I caught the glade of wetness slick over Rose's eyes before they hardened to astonished tawny, and the two women held their hands out to one another and the Plantain-I-Wanted-to-Maim came back alive with is murmurings, "_His muchaca querida, they'll be interested in knowing about her… and she knows of vampires… wolves… transgressions. This is quite a fortuitous turn of events."_

I shoveled my fists to his throat, hanging him in the air like a dead man from the gallows. Tightening the noose of my fingers, I listened to his thoughts becoming more ginger, _"Muchacho__**, **__you don't want to do this. There's to be a coup__**. **__My errand is for another." _

I lessened my grip so he dropped like pig slop to the forest floor, his calamitous worries silenced as he caught his meaty breath.

Rose and Irina were emoting or some shit all over each other… a goddamn girly moment? What the shit? _They weren't even supposed to have chick hormones, were they?_

Flamenco-Cokehead opened a gilded chased vial hanging on a long chain about his neck and opened it… took a drift under his nail and swiped it to his long beak of a nose.

He offered it to me.

_Just say no._

The embrasure didn't last.

Another razor of suspicion slewed between Rose and Irina.

Irina spoke, "The wolves? How could you?"

"What?" Rose looked at me—_we hadn't wanted them to know, but it was pretty damn hard to deny the presence of a bunch of big old hairy beasts back Maw and Paw's._

"Remember? I told you, girl, Kate went off with a human, and he shifted… _what was his name? _Paul. He was different from the usual Natives. His kind was from New Orleans, by way of Acadia and Dominica."

_Yeah, I friggin' knew all about that._

We started circling like mammals on the hunt, but we were all sharks here.

Our teeth gleamed and captured the dime of moonlight watering down through cloud cover and foliage.

The mood helixed up into a tight knot… nothing good would come of this.

Bones that could hardly be broken shored, muscles that were steely and near indestructible bulged and carved.

Faces that had been greetin' turned to masquerades of rotten intent.

Every thought ate through me like maggots:_ he knows, she knows, what is she doing with Emmett, why is she with El-Cunto? Bella is a prize. Edward our price to pay. Masterplan, don't deviate. Can't kill. You can't kill her, she's my daughter. Volturi. End game. Alice? Jasper. Edward. Bella. Save them. For him. Where's Em? Why are we… what do they want?_

_Wolves._

"They stink." Irina looked toxic, primal, capable of causing death.

De Nada Grenada encapsulated all the flooding bitterness and smiled like the grim reaper.

"So does he."

Goading each other: me and Rose, Irina and the Stylist of Seville, I needed _one reason _not to kill.

Rose pounded mud and made to Irina, handling her gently, but just one turn of her fingers against her neck and she'd be ash, "The _dogs_ are out of the bag?"

Skunk-Ass was fathoming strategies, and I smiled as I met every one he imagined.

_I want to kill you._

His breath stopped, gasped, pileated as I plied more and more strength to his strong esophagus again… he'd tried to turncoat, but he was slower than a tortoise compared to me, "Not necessarily."

He slumped for a moment and erected himself, straightening his dandy fine linen**-**trying to blend in with downtown's Charleston's faggoty fops-he wore, "Perhaps, _Señor_, we'll keep this wildcard between us?"

"Maybe," I countered and hunkered, still wanting nothing but the wailing escape of horrid quarters being pulled apart by my hands.

Black coal, catchpole. I observed; he scuttled, crab-like, back to Irina.

The wannabe Sicilian svengalied his way out, inspecting his fingernails and flicking out dirt, "I am with the Volturi," He looked ever more alien**, **bending his neck at a bird-like angle, "but I am the least of your worries." They took in the swamp around them, measuring their safest retreat, he and Irina.

_What the fuck?_

Holding their hands up as prisoners walking free, Irina fucked with me, mutely, _"Dear Alice is coming."_

The traitors ran, and I stopped ten feet away as they hatched a plan for their escape to a skiff on a reef down on the intracoastal lagoon.

A last warning wended on the toppling waves,_ "You need to turn her, Eduardo__**.**__Even I know: End or Be."_

Alice's raving mad visions were getting closer as she and Jizz ate up the turf between us, and I did _not_ need one more example of our worth to get back to Italy courtesy of _El Hombre Horrible_.

_Now they would know about my Bella._

I howled and hunched**, **"Fuck you! So she can be next on your most wanted list?" They were in the water, they were getting away. I wanted them outta here. I wanted to tear and dice and slice and fuckin' fillet them.

_I needed them gone._

I whispered in quick spats to Rose, "I'll distract them; you head Alice and Junior off at the pass."

"How are you gonna do that?"

"Fuckin' watch me."

I waded after the duo, the thick, smelly mud unable to suck me down. I considered rushing ahead and breakin' the prow of their getaway rowboat, _but I needed them to leave. I didn't have time to kill them, Eleazer couldn't know about Alice too. If he didn't return to the homeland, that would raise even fuckin' more suspicions._

I breathed in and made for the Salamanca Salami, churning up salt and brine and weed. My voice was bronzed, "You _ever_fuckin' threaten mah woman again, you are dead meat!"

Irina shook her head with a phantasmagorical wonderment on her face, watching me wilden over her companion. Scraping my talons across his oily neck, I left mere tracks in his ironside skin. It _distracted_ him enough. So I could grin like the reaper and harvest his right arm from his body. I could have done it quickly; instead I listened to the sick screech of titanium bone loosening from ore-like socket as I twisted… _slowly..._ and Broke. His. Arm. Off.

Tossing the limb out into the current, a good football field away, the crescent of my smile turned more steely. He cried like a baby as he limped about like a gutted and gilled fish… it was a beautiful goddamn sound, but not enough.

_Not enough._

I heard Rose from the shore, _"Nice one,"_ before she raced away. Fleet-footed fox.

_More. _

Blinded by pain as colloidal silver venom leaked and then came out in clots and gushes, El Fucker floundered in the wet and murk and muck.

_Gore._

"AAAAHHHH!" His curdling cry called out a coven of bats that swooped and rose and broke apart, just like I wishboned his prismic leg off at the knee.

I gave pity this time. I lobbed it to the boat.

A small push from my hand to his back and he was shoved down in swamp and lilypads. I held his face in the suffocating slime until he thrashed… _as if he could die like this._

Grimly, I met Irina's eyes.

She looked scared.

I nodded.

_It's not what you think, Eddie._

"Yeah, I fuckin' hear that a lot, and I'm past caring now," I let up on the Babaloo who spluttered up makin' a helluva hullabaloo, "Get this piece of shit the fuck out of my state and mah country, Irina… or I swear to fuck, I will bring this war to Denali."

Shoving my toe into his empty arm socket, I laughed as he bellied over again.

"Adios, Castilian _Conjo._"

The Righteous Raven, Jazz, and Rose were huddled in a copse…Rose regaling my tearin' up like she was John Madden.

They looked up at me like I was a goddamn star quarterback or somethin' when I made over to them, dusting off my jeans and scraping drops of platinum venom from my impenetrable skin.

_Nasty shit._

The witchy widget wasn't lookin' so enthralled though as she thudded up to me, "You let them go?"

She was fuckin' lucky I'd just let loose on the Sebaceous Spaniard because I felt a little bit less like tearing off her batwings and enjoying their dark flanks parted from lumbar, "Yeah. What of it, sister?"

_Why?_

"Why don't you tell me what you see for a fuckin' change?" I demanded, the stretch of blood-howl beginning to broil in me again.

Jizz grabbed my arm—it was raised, and I hadn't even realized it. Shakin' him off, I apologized, the lax anesthetization of his emoting-bullshit settling me back down, "Sorry, man."

He assented and let me go.

"I don't know, you goddamn vampire-mishap, I seem to have lost my crystal ball," Alice taunted.

_Fuck!_

"I let them goddamn go because… _he was going to see you, Alice, and realize your gift,_" I pushed my fists into my pockets, tearing through the frail cotton to my thighs that were scored with thick muscle readying to kill for real.

Her shorn hair shuddered like krill. She looked away. "He's going back to Italy, on the first boat." the Debilitated Deviant mentioned. A slight sway of her reedy body found Jazz at her back, catching her and holding her as she collapsed into one of her nightmare trances, "It's not Aro." How I friggin' hated that comatose atonality of her voice. Worried bleak eyes met mine… _Jazz._ He took Alice back to a tree trunk where salamanders and skinks rushed out, nosing beneath rotting leaves to get away from us killers.

"No?" I followed, interrogated, would never let up on her.

"Maybe he's free range,"I fuckin' didn't have him pegged as being into the organics, but I was done with this chicken shit… "Who is he workin' for?"

The sauce of her vision sluiced dirtily to me, unclear. _She was hearing me, but seeing something else._ "Oh! He's with the Guard… but his allegiance is to the other brother."

"Marcus or Caius?" I demanded. But a thick ripple of cloth descended over her.

The fraught fjord of her irises cleared slowly, "I don't know."

She seemingly slumbered against Jazz.

I paced and groaned… _nothing was any better. Everything was worse. This FUCKING curse!_

Jizz commanded_: You need to get a grip, man._

"I can't… I can't breathe, I can't stop, I can't concentrate… where the fuck's Bella? I need her." I was cursing and mumbling and only stopped to fall down in a hulking, muscled, atrophying shape.

_To stop._

The Stroppy Tar Baby turned me over like a pig on a spit, "Didn't you hear Eleazar, Eddie… didn't you hear him coming to the Bluff?"

Into the ground, I mashed an ant mound, making sure the fire-hell fuckers were pulpy antennas and nothin' else, "No."

From the sloop of her unearthly headtrip, Alice'stone gained strength, "Why not?" She held a smirk in her voice… punishing me for not listening.

"I couldn't, I was talkin' to Carl… I was talkin' about… _Bella_," just saying her name pressed into me like a tattoo over my soul, soldering me to the memory of her letting me cum all over her in Maw's bathroom and just like that I was gone again. I heard a titter and tore away from my remembrance, watching Palmetto bugs and other nightly thugs scamper aside as I flew to Fortune-Telling Alice and lowered before her, "Why didn't _you_ warn us?"

She shrugged herself further into Junior and recovered, "I was busy." _Ugh-fuck-no!_ I didn't need the extreme scene of her and Jizz rockin' the single wide. "Besides, you psychic sicko, the wolves were there. I've already told you; I can't see into them, and I can't see around them… the natives were on their way before Eleazar and Irina even crossed the line from the Charleston National Golf Course to Stratton Place."

Reaching forward to throttle more out of her, I was halted by my brother, "_She's not infallible, and neither are you."_

_But I needed to be._

Rose hopped around like Br'er Fox, unable to settle through her reunion with Irina and the damp, deep emotions it dug up. I tried to cut her thoughts off because the loop-de-loop made my brain goddamn hurt.

And here came Uncle Goddamn Ridiculous Remus, all _zippity-doo-da-day, _muttering to himself, "_Damn, my dogs are barkin'! I need to get me some insoles or some shit…"_

I was gonna hay-bale him because… _where the fuck was Bella?_

There was no heartbeat, no blood-rush, no tingle up and down my body… no Bella.

Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear, Br'er Rabbit… trapped. _Tricksters._

He moseyed up to us, spat a wobbly glot of tobacco at my feet, "So, braw, what'd the Volturi's own Simon Cowell want with y'all?"

I looked at the stupid fucker, denying an answer.

"What? Even that little pissant town of Greer has _American Idol_ night, we should go sometime, dude!"

"Don't fuckin' _dude_ me," I clattered my fists to my armpits, "You just had to stick it in Irina, didn't you."

Bubba tossed back to his heels and relaxed his mighty arms and met me, "No shit, Dick Tracy. No less you and Tanya." _He was right. The succa sisters times three. They'd had us at one time or another._

Rose tread soft ground, ground out, "If you ever mention Irina _and you_ again, I will serve your handsome nuts up like Rocky Mountain Oysters at Mama Brown's, you got it?"

Em didn't know whether to hug her or run away, instead he dimpled and grinned and good ol' boy'd, "Yes, ma'am, whatever you say."

"Damn right," Rose kissed him and punched the rough tough tank of his gut.

_God, I love me this woman._ He thought.

I'd had about enough of this. "Where the fuck is Bella?"

_Kill, keep safe, make her… Bella naked…_

He ratcheted his bull-neck and barked a laugh like lug-nut, "With them Southern Shifters."

"WHAT?" The minute bit of peace around us fragmented with my fury.

"She asked me to take her to Jacob," he surrendered distance between us.

"So you did?" I couldn't wrap my fuckin' head around this new bullshit.

Bubba hocked a harsh laugh and asked honestly, "You ever say no to her?"

_No_, me and my cock both agreed until I was smiling wistfully, "But _damn_, man… what the fuck?"

"She was pretty shook up, Eddie."

_Goddamnit!_ I saw her through him, watery and wasted and trembling but her chin was strong and the expression decided. Her, watching me. Her tracing back and forth as if following the tread of my retreat, visibly battling back tears and anger and despair. Her eyes like obstinate carbon with just the touch of glimmer-wet as she looked up at Em and told him, "I need to go to the wolves."

_Why? Why would she go to Jacob?_

I was gathered inside Bubba's sight of her, hanging on to each glimpse, not knowing when I'd see her again… _I was hangin' by a thread and it was fast unraveling._

"Yeah, I took her to _Doggie Howser_ because she asked me to, braw. Shit, I heard all about how them all are her family from your maniacal ramblings, so I figgered he was a cool enough fucker, right? And what better than a den of wolves to safeguard her from vampires?"

_Me, that's who._

I sank to him, bottoming out, "You gave her…to the NOLA Newfoundlands?"

Even though he'd admitted it, I just couldn't fathom it.

A complete howitzer of feeling rocketed inside me!

"You sufferin' from Seasonal Affective Disorder or somethin'?" I clubbed him and stood off because the dufus was just that dim to take a crack at me, and this time my retaliation would be more than a knee to his balls.

The smallest gale of a breeze alerted me to a scent that smelled the most sweet, the most luscious, the most… _meaningful_, and yet it was a perfume made unpleasant by a swilling pong that didn't belong on her_._

"_Oh Jesus Goddamn Christ."_

"What?" Bubba looked around, penetratin' the prolapsed night with his sight.

Alice tumbled back, "She's out here. She's alone."

_She's lookin' for you, Eddie. _I took a reading from Alice and saw Bella turnin' through the wetlands, listening intently, slapping at mosquitoes and cursing them out.

The earth was not old enough to withstand all the chaos I wanted to cause.

I warned them each in turn, "You do not take Bella's life in vain."

With her track mapped out, I sped.

Jazz cushioned himself from my fallout.

Looking back, I saw Em and Rose, ambling off, "Irina?"

Bubba hankered to her, "She was kinda frigid and shit."

"Bella? She'll be okay, right? They'll be alright?"

"She's Eddie's. And I will fuck anyone up that comes near them."

"You and me both."

_Alice followed._

Sleepy hollows.

Inside the Cooky Spook's scenic imaginings, Bella was so ivory, she glowed.

But the closer I got, the more off she smelled.

_Wolfmeat_**.**

Yeah, Bella had the manky smoke of TImberwolf tobacco all over her: _Moist Snuff 'For men who like tobacco.'_

Closer.

_Closer._

She was barefoot, and braless—_where the hell was her bra?—_and as the silver mist of rain began, it saturated her top to the likes of a wet t-shirt contest; bright, deep nubbins knockin' through the fabric.

_Their whiff masked Bella's beautiful blood scent; I almost wanted to bite her to bring it back, that bouquet of her flesh and wetness and sex… I was that irrational._

I wouldn't.

"I won't," I stamped out at Alice as she kept pace just behind me, rushing back and forth, watching, looking, _just in case El Creepo came back._

But my eyes narrowed at the stench. "She made Jacob bring her back from their shantytown in Goose Creek." Alice nodded her head and looked beyond and back through the shuffle of time, almost laughing, "She told him she'd open her shield and show his brothers and Leah all about the time he tried to cop a feel a few years ago and she smacked him down so hard he almost cried."

I chuckled, "Oh man, that's harsh."

Alice met my eyes, "Ballsy."

"Can she do that?" Because, _holy hell, _that'd be powerful! _And,_ fuck. That would be really hot for me… if she could drop it down long enough to let me fuck her… eroticism times ten million.

"But that don't explain what she's doin' out here without her Bow-wow Bouncer."

We were getting close, and the rank intensified so I wanted one of Bubba's surgical masks that he used on high ozone days to cut the reek in half.

"He got out to take a piss, and she grabbed his Bowie knife off the dash-" I saw it now. _Bella, stronger than me and so, so friggin' stubborn. White throat thrown up, as she pressed the point of the knife exactly to the jumping vein in her neck… the sexy river down her throat that I muffled against almost every time I came inside of her, or on her tits, or against her ass. Thump-thump. A slight pump and a little bit of blood dropped out. Dark to light. Jacob turned while he zipped up and raised his behemoth hands, "Whoa there, Bella. What are you doin'?" _

_Her eyes looked purple, definite. Sure. "Remember the Third Wife, la __Troisième Femme__? When she met the Carib soucouyant? Everyone was attacking, attaching, ripping-tearing. You told me this. La __Troisième Femme of Jean D'abbadie-__Blaquiere_._ What did she do, Jacob, to draw attention to herself, away from her loved ones?"_

_He gulped and fell back, "Don't."_

"_She stabbed herself so the soucouyant came after her alone." The tip pierced harder and a dribble of black blood ran to the scallop of her collarbone where it pooled. "Only I don't want you to come after me. I need to go to Eddie. Alone. And I will kill myself if you try to stop me."_

"_She did it to save her people, Bella," Jacob implied._

"_And so will I, he is my people," she staged away, the knife held too tight, kiting along her skin and stretching it to breaking point. _

"That's stupid! She'd do that… _what_? To find_ me?_" I was a complete mess… _why would she? How could she even?_

"What would you do for her, Eddie?" Alienating Alice asked.

_What wouldn't I do, who wouldn't I kill… including her._

Now Bella gingerly stepped in the non-light, littering over tree stumps that lay half-hidden like bear snares. Stumbling a bit, the huge, sharp knife stowed safely in the scabbard again, smacking against her hip.

_Closer._

_Need._

Bella didn't dawdle. But I'd never tried to keep pace with a mortal before. It enraged me even more. I held back and to the side, idling, watching, smelling and all the while becoming more and more tense.

Worried, incensed**, **_scared_ at the lengths she'd go.

_At the lengths I'd go to have her and keep her with me._

_Mine, mine alone._

The sheltered forest shook profoundly as the rain began to pound. The humid air just made the nauseating smell, repelling me and calling me forward, more dense.

As ever, I was in two minds, beholden to two at-odds instincts; to kill, to fuck… to drink of her luscious blood or to make love to her sumptuously soft body. Embroiled in vampire, wolf, love, lore… fuckin' taking my woman to meet my parents, I was ambushed by the elemental essence of vampire, mating, _for life_. All the funnin', gunning, mud running and fucking I'd done… it all goddamn disintegrated. Struggling to find middle ground amongst the wind torn limbs and shimmery leaves scattered all about, I tried to remember.

I remembered.

I loved her.

_She smelled of him. She smelled of blood._

_She didn't smell like she was mine._

Stalking through sharp saw palm fronds, craving a stinging slice to carve into my skin, wishing I had permeable flesh and blood that would bead and drop to the forest floor that cushioned my stealthy footfalls. Decaying leaves, damp pinestraw, ferns and mushrooms crushed quietly underfoot. Even the husks of crackling dead pinecones hushed against my soft soles.

No solace.

The landscape didn't give the caress I desired.

Live oaks giving berth to green-plumed resurrection ferns that nestled into the lengthening limbs. Monolithic and centuries old, they tiered above, blocking out the moon and stars. Cedars swept past me, and my scant touch sent the earthy scent into the air. Nocturnal wildlife scurried for refuge at my every step.

All flaring nostrils, dilated coal-black eyes, I was maddened right to the roots of my disheveled hair. My mind was a void that swirled within the deadly calm mist of nothingness that flew from Bella's barrier of a brain to mine. So much so that I had not even a forewarning of Alice's approach until she was back at my side and yanking hard on my arm. One more ounce of strength and the Prying Little Puppet would have torn it from the tautly sprung ligaments of my shoulder.

It was too late to run away from her.

I'd used her to get here.

Hissing, crouching, commanding me to stop, "Eddie! What the fuck? I've seen what you're thinking. _Go home now!_ You're in no state to confront Bella, not like this."

"You think I'm gonna hurt her?" I wheeled on Alice, unbelieving.

"Maybe not physically, but…"

"I would _never_ do that to Bella. I goddamn love her."

"I know you do, that's why you should let me go to her tonight," the Temeritous Termite declared again.

"Like that is ever fuckin' gonna happen, even when we live to be a million years old," but she held me in her head and in her hands.

With a steely grip I clasped her wrist, so fragile in sight but like wrought iron in feel, and pulled myself free.

I ran then. To Bella. Crashing silently through the glades, I halted exactly four feet in front of her downcast eyes. Mumbling and swearing to herself as she ever more cautiously picked her way across the treacherous ground.

I would eat that fucking whelp for breakfast if he had so much as put lips to her skin!

I slapped the last fronds away from us so we stood stock-still and eye-to-eye when I bent low.

The air escaped in a _whoosh_ from both our chests as we met and held, held on for life, held through death.

And I couldn't stop.

Even as I kissed her mouth, starting slowly and rushing to a throaty, hungry, primeval call, the Jurassic pound of my institution ran me over, and I threw myself away from Bella.

Hashing between anger and relief, I hissed, wiped her kiss from my lips and then held my fingers with her wrong-smell to my mouth.

Her tits rose like a jitney under the globe of the night with every heavy, hot breath.

Jittery, I prowled back and forth and began half a dozen times as five-hundred pound bombs dynamited throughout me: _Safe, she's here, she came, I found her, they're gone… she went to him._

She neither shrank back nor stepped forward. Her hands held out to me.

_More than I deserved._

"FUCK!" The expletive fled my lips in resounding vehemence, thriving across the insular rain-soaked woods to rebound back around us.

Normally teasing, or compassionate, or passion-held, Bella's brittle carob eyes met mine. The deep brown of them mirrored the muddy earth below. She was instantly pissed.

"What's the matter with you?" she wangled just close enough to push my chest, punch my gut, and give me the finger.

I jerked her to me, the wetness makin' her slippery as marsh, her boobs like tip-topped hills of marshmallow between us, flattening to me.

"How the _hell_ could you come out here on your own?" Angrily I angled down and descended and bit-nipped her dianthus lips. _Bite, own, lick… beg to be forgiven._

I didn't wait for her answer, "Jesus, Woman! Don't you understand the gravity of this shit?" She nodded, the horizon of her eyes open to the ends of the earth, and the sickening slowness of her heart_ stop-beat-stop-gushed._

A star shot to the ground faster than my persistent look could follow.

And then Bella gathered all the righteous wind to her sails and sallied forth and had me backed up to a maple, "Yeah, Eddie. I _get it._ I get _you._ I came out here _for you, _you shit."

She turned, and the mire sucked at her soles and _solace and comfort and what was I doin' to her?_

Through gritted teeth, grinding them-if they'd been capable of crushing-to pathetic nubs, I couldn't cuntin' stop, "Dammit, Bella! You're supposed to smell of me! What did you let that mutt do to you?"

_Unreasonable._

"He consoled me."

"Oh, it seems like he did more than that, _love_," I made sure to paint my fingers down her back and over her tits where she was clearly missing an important article of clothing.

"Jesus, Eddie! It was wet!"

_I bet it was._

Her hair tied round my wrist, I roped up behind Bella, beneath Bella. "_Consoling you is my job, love."_

Her half-lit lips met mine to the side, "Well you're givin' a poor show of it, _baby._" A rampant kiss as I felt inside her mouth, all the slinky warmth and pretty teeth and pressing tongue but she held me back and took away, "I knew I could get to Jacob. _I knew I could make him bring me here._" She stormed a few feet away and turned and stared me down and lashed, "I _used_ my best friend, I _scared_ him so I could friggin' find you!

"Do you have any idea, Eddie," Bella sat down and blackened her jeans and hugged her knees and looked me over with that cataclysmic tremble to her mouth, "Do you have any idea what you did to me, when you left?

"_I thought they were going to kill you._

"And I'm supposed to save you," she broke off to laugh, once, "You! You, my lover… _my love. I love you, Eddie,_ even when you're an asshole."

Racing to our standstill, Alice stood to the side, warily watching the battle between myself and Bella, and something even I did not understand. Outraged at her interruption and her unnecessary presence, I imperiously flicked my wrist towards the Petite Puck, "Leave us." As if I were the King of England. Lookin' through the Naiad Nobody, I demanded privacy and ordered her to go her own way, not releasing Bella's eyes that held their own hardened surface of authority. Not one bit scared.

Bella had awakened me from a century-long lethargy, an apathy I only realized in light of her dawning in my death-life. I'd never been unsatisfied before. Now I knew I would never again be content without her in my world. And every fuck-kiss-kill, every city, state, country I'd ever resided in, every decade I'd witnessed from beginning to end now seemed completely lacking.

_Roused_. Both beast and man. _Lover and killer_. And all of it, every unchecked emotion, was directed at Bella.

_Oh, this was going to be good._

Or very, very bad.

At least the Cracked-up Little Courtier was gone.

Bella's widow's peak peeked up at me as she lifted her eyes, desultorily.

_Undead,_ I held her face, trying for tenderness.

I kissed every freckle that sandstormed her cheeks and nose.

The wimple of her hair wound me up, "Tell me to stop, Bella," every word hashed to her body, my hands seeking, searching, searing her to me.

"I can't, I won't, Eddie," just the warmth of her oven-like fingers to my abdomen turned me inside-out.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," it was my malediction, my new mantra.

_Dominion._

_Authority._

_Domination._

_Sway._

_Order._

_Direct._

Snarling, teeth bared, and questioning the meaning of Jacob's aroma masking her own delectable perfume.

Not deigning to answer, Bella was taller, stronger, more sure of herself and her draw upon me than ever before.

Burning.

Smoldering, Bella took me. _Bella knew me._

Her hands surely took apart the buttons of my jeans, and I leaned back and let her get the wet denim down my legs, and where it stuck she stopped to suck until I broke through yet another tree. _Back and back and through more trees we tracked._

Until I was naked and erect and ready and filled and wanting.

Kissing over my dick, she was a flirt, "You like that?"

_Yes, yes!_

I pulled her nipples up and slid down so my dick was at face height and she took a long, healthy lick before opening widely for me to breech her mouth, "_Oh shit. Oh Bella!" _ I blasted, "Oh fuck-a-goddamn! _Uh-hell, that's uh… conduct unbecomin' of a lady."_

She sat back and laughed and let my ripe fruitious dick slide all over her face and neck, and handled it to her tits and nips, "Really?"

I smelled the new warmth dozing between her legs, then I reached down and swirled into it with my fingers, _feeling_ every twitch and gasp and inhale and huff that met me, stuffing her, and pluffing her up.

Then she stood.

Too tall, taller than me.

A whippoorwill, a pussy willow.

_Strongwilled._

"You been barkin' up the wrong tree, baby," _Oh shit, had I ever._

"Anything, everything, Bella, please, love, now," I frowned at her walking away.

_Give in. _

_Belong._

"Now?" Her.

"Now." Me.

"You, take me." _Willingly_.

"You have me," _totally._

Ripping her clothes off, damp fragments of fabric that were glued with the pounding beaded cords of rain to her every erotic curve, I snarled… _sucked, kissed, bit as softly as possible, _wanting to rip into more than mere cloth.

But not her, not here, not now.

Not Bella. _Not yet._

I was staggering on top of the muddy, boggy ground and beneath the ferocity tightening around me like a cable to my every huge, hard muscle.

She was infuriating me.

_She was allowing me._

_She loved me._

She lifted not one finger to assist me, the look in her eyes a challenge. I didn't need her help anyway. I could have her naked in two seconds flat. _And I did._ Pity about her pretty shirt, but that was a minor concern when compared to all the rest.

Her haughtiness met my high-handedness, and I knew I was going to put paid to that. Through the arrogance, the stunning sight of her bare body revealed to me with the heaving of heaven's nebulous tears pounding down so that they gloved her skin in the thready lines of moonlight, deafening all but the _crack-boom_ of June's augury thunder, the fact that she would never cower from me, never hide, emboldened me. Made me want to find my knees and crawl to her. Kiss her feet and beg her forgiveness for my intemperate reaction.

She would meet my demands head on, look me in the eye even when my own were wild crimson red and ornery obsidian black; resolute. And destined to be mine.

_Fuck me_, just as surely as I was hers.

Backing her into the tree trunk, limbs ivory soft and easily molded to the puzzle of southern pinebark**.** Extraordinary tits mounded and topped by swollen teasers of the taste that lingered within the wettest of wet, the tightest of tight pussies.

I smirked and shook. She laughed brazenly and lifted her arms above her head, in entreaty and absolute avarice. She knew she had a firm hold of my dick, and suddenly seemed to understand her hold on my heart, _dead_, my soul, _extinguished_, was just as unbreakable.

My jealousy flared another notch, like a warning signal across the sky, and we both chose to ignore the alarm of my raw need, _growling_, Mother Nature's weapons, _gathering above us in dense, black clouds blanketing the sky until the moon was eclipsed_.

I didn't want her below me; it was me who should be supplicant.

Down her front, turning her around and tearing off her panties, I palmed her so that my leviathan hand held all of the juiciness of her, my fingertips to her clitoris and my hand seated firmly upon her pussy. Shaken as another crazed white gash fledged from sky to ground only yards away, Bella scratched the timber and rasped her nipples to bark, twined her arms around the root and pushed down onto me.

_And I found my fuckin' knees_, up to my thighs in the sudden swamp crawling up my legs and flooding against my cock.

My fingers were gentler, my voice grating, soothing, asking, "Please, Bella," against her luscious ass. My tongue parted her, and I was heady, needful, contained only in the feeling of her above me… swaying, arching, simpering and looking back down on me.

_Here, I am._

Giving her what she needed without making her plead or beg. Because Bella should never beseech, Bella didn't have to _ask. _ Because Bella should know she was beyond such a thing, with me.

From far above me, a divinity, a goddamn goddess, she lowered her hand-her palm scratched and plinked with drops of blood—raised my chin from between her dancing legs, towed me up. _Up, up, up._

Her voice a platinum yarn that cut me, cured me, she demanded against my mouth, "Don't you ever doubt me again, Eddie."

"Yeeeeessss!" Her head thrashing side to side and clenching the wood to her front, ass spread out and splayed, legs widened.

Reeling her in, hook, line, and sinker, and completely wrapped up in her reactions, the way she would not bow to me, answering my every demand with one of her own.

_Equally._

A balancing act.

Tantalizing, teasing, marking her.

Taking command, turning the tables, Bella reined me against her and bit my jaw and ran her tongue down to my chest, swaying sexually against me, over me, marking me, _making me._

I'd let myself be turned to ashes as long as she could live. And love.

Love me.

_Fuck me!_

I was dead.

I pulled out and groaned to her every moan.

Thick, shredding, sloop.

My cock was trailing venom down her thighs as I pushed under her, opening her pretty pussy with my hand and lickin' up her sweet slit.

_Anointed._

She grabbed me by hair and throat and trashed into me, _"Oh yeah, GOD-fuck-yes, I'm yours!"_

I still wondered about setting car alarms off, or at least getting' her to shout my name when she got off.

My smile unwrapped her.

I licked from perineum to clit with the flat of my tongue and would fucking eat crow every day of the week, ten times on Sunday, if this is what my insanely disgraceful, unjust anger brought to my dinner table.

_Old Jim Crow._

By God!

I followed the same move several times, totally aware of Bella's bitten off whimpers, and halted only to ask, with a grin and lick of my Bella-stained lips, "Like that, Miss?"

In response, Bella let loose an almighty throaty growl, pushed the heel of her foot against the back of my shoulder, tore one hand against the coarse copper cornsilk at my temple so my lips and mouth and tongue had no other recourse than to plunge _hard_, lick _soft_, suck with a simpering touch, and her other hand lifted up to wrap around the tree above her head so that her entire body created a bow.

I was the arrow.

I felt a tomahawk stabbing the void in my chest as I watched her unheralded reactions to my tongue-fuck.

She rasped me apart, and we began together.

Soft as heather, hot as hell, Hades…

We fucked.

Right there.

Right then.

In that glen.

A huge shove and that was all it took as we both came so goddamn hard we splintered the bark, and I couldn't stop jerkin' against her bottom, and she started hiccupping-laughing and telling me off all in one while I was still spilling inside of her, wondering when I could fuck her again, because I was still so hard.

I never let loose her tresses.

I pushed back up into her, _Bella-mine._

I moaned, and we halted to each other.

"_God-fuck-shit-woman, _I love you," I held her cheeks. The lower ones.

The brilliance of her fingers waned. I watched. She brought my mouth to hers, sighing, "Don't make me suffer again."

_I was a goner._

My tongue was trapped.

And they had come back.

I was still just as ready to kill.

I was gonna mutilate somebody else tonight.

Quickly, I shoved Bella behind a stand of umbrella-like willows and dressed her hurriedly.

"What?"

I shook my head and looked down to the ground, and her bare feet, and her toes—_I wanted to kiss her toes, I wanted to spend an entire day with her feet in my lap and her legs open, just caressing her body._

A howl opened the air around us and parted the curtain of plumed leaves that housed us.

"BELLA!"

"_Jacob," _she whispered, startling away from me.

"Stay?" I asked her. I frowned and looked at her through the length of my eyelashes and spelled her, "Please, darlin', please stay here."

"What do you want, Scrappy?" I'd hastily pulled up my jeans; my shirt was hangin' off a branch about eight feet up and twenty feet over.

Looking behind me to Bella, Jacob asked, "You okay, Bella?" and then he mumbled, "Doesn't he even own a shirt?"

Apparently my charm hadn't worked all that well on Bella—no surprise there - because she came to my side, "Yeah." _I'm okay._ And, "No, he seems to have lost his shirt," she touched my stomach and the thick hair pushing down to my jeans.

_Not a good idea to torture the vampire when he really wants to kill your BFF Bowzer, Bella._

I placed her hands back at her sides.

"So, you plannin' on campin' out here tonight, or are y'all headed back to town?" the Cutting-His-Milk-Teeth-Mongrel wanted to know, as if it was any of his business.

I began my advance, "Nah, seems I left my teepee at your place."

"Fuckin' burned it, vampire," Scooby-Doo narrowed his eyes.

"Probably stank of y'all anyway, Yurt-Squirt," I quipped, anger replacing banter.

"What's your problem?"

"Ha!" I laughed because Bella'd already asked me that. "You lost track of Bella." I goddamn needed all these people, and Gullah, and Hoodoo hounds, and my own crew to take better care of her, or she was gonna die.

He sneered, "You saw what she did, right?"

I nodded and needled Bella back and back and back away from me, away from him, away from us.

"So you'd rather I'd let her kill herself than come find you?" _Dude's cracked!_

"She's not gonna kill-" I stationed Bella under the cave of willows and beseeched her to stay still, "_Please, baby._"

"No, that's right. She's going to let you do it for her," Ja-cub announced.

_What? _I ran out to him, I looked at Bella, _wait. Dammit. What?_

"That's none of your fuckin' business, she's my jurisdiction," _my addiction_, "so you can get the fuck outta here."

"I don't think so, bro," Jacob asserted.

Materializing from the gunmetal forest came another. "Who the hell's this?"

"Paul."

_Paul. Paul who Irina had spoken of, with Kate._

"Oh, this cocksuckin' night just gets better'n better, don't it," I wasn't amused. "I heard all about Paul, just a couple hours ago, in fact. _Irina says he's untrustworthy._ So you tell me why I shouldn't kill you both now."

A screech like a seagull's cry raped across me, but I steeled myself.

Shivery and shaky and slaking slobber from his malformed lips as he tried not to transform in front of me, almost-Shaggy growled, "So you're gonna take the vampiress' word for it?"

In a stop-gap second I was right up against him, tryin' not to inhale his tang, "News flash, Fuckwit_**, **__I am a vampire, _so yeah… I probably will."

"Now listen, man, I told Leah I wouldn't rough you up," _More like ruff me up_, "Because she thinks you're 'pretty' and shit, but…"

"Jacob, don't!" _Bella, Bella, Bella._

"Oh yeah, you gonna go Coyote Ugly on me?" I aggravated him because I goddamn needed to fight… again… _more._

I'd never scrapped with a wolf.

Flexing and dropping low to the ground, I felt the venom dropping slowly from my bared teeth like an unplugged IV, and he did that dog thing with his eyes widening and rollin' around like he was rabid as fuck.

Their skin melted in painful-lookin' mongrelization.

Sharp paths of blades and bones and teeth and snout moored to bushy fleece.

He snarled and held Paul off with his thoughts alone… and I heard Bella shouting, but I shut her out, not even lookin' at her but knowing she was well away from the ring of threat we were beginning to pound around each other.

Nappy as a grassy wigwam, the warg galloped to me and I spliced into the wind. He stopped, stomped, snorted big jets of nasty breath and tried again.

This time he scored.

He backhanded me, and I soared backward like nothin' more than a tar-doll, _and it felt good._

"EDDIE!"

I grinned and trapped the Carib Cur in my eyes. _Left-right-right-circumvent-tackle._ Fluff, fur; I somersaulted across the air, spinning over and over and stoppin' just enough to take aim with my boot to his scruffy neck before rollin' behind him.

Too big, too bulky, he was fast, but not fast as me.

I laughed!

_This felt good. _ Yeah he could kill me, but just me; only my existence was in danger as I leapt up before he could even turn that fuckin' great mealy head of his in my direction… onto his wide back.

I started to hack away at him.

_Not Bella. She was safe… for now._

_Bella. She kept breakin' in._

_Why couldn't I just end them all? It should just be me and her._

I stuck to his grizzled back like a sleek patch of pine pitch, and he couldn't get me loose… digging' my fingers into the matted bristles covering his giant shoulders, I sawed away at thick tangles of fur to find flesh and bone.

The snap of his canines almost caught my hands, and I growled against his black-tan ear, "She's mine!"

_Bella._

I looked over as I hooked upon him, into him, just enough to cause the largess of his howl to flatten a tree and make Paul whine in the background.

_I wouldn't hurt him, really._

Bella.

She watched with all directions of horror spinning over her face, rooted where I'd left her. Mouthing my name, maybe she was shouting it, but I couldn't hear a damn thing beyond the _thud-pulse-pounce_ of my toxin and the insanity that had made this all seem… _seem… _completely fuckin' reasonable.

In a turn of… guilt? Conscience? Ownership up of just how fucked up I was? I slithered off the wanker and slapped his mug and tried to tuck his handfuls of tufts and a couple bits of tissue back to his filthy body, avoiding the crack-gash of his maw.

I gave a final punch to his jaw and made him look at me, "Fuckin' heel, asshole."

_Holy shit! It worked._

He settled on his haunches and started lickin' his wounds and in twenty seconds he'd materialized back to the ugly motherfuckin' huge-ass, shamanistic, shapeshiftin' human Voodoo teen I'd just beaten the shit out of.

Paul followed suit, or rather, unsuited back to himself.

Now that shit was some scary to me, bad-ass vampire or not. It was like watchin' The Fly in reverse; perverse and somewhat gross as veins popped and bones melded and hair collapsed and then… _eyes, my eyes-I made sure Bella wasn't lookin', finding her and covering her face with my hands, turning her to my torso where she stiffly stood, sniffling—_shit, them fuckers were naked.

"Cunt off now, bastards." I yelled.

"Whatever, seersuckin' bloodsucker," Paul clapped Jacob's back and led him away.

Mojo Cujo performed some sort of ungainly-as-fuck victory dance, like he'd just scored a touchdown, lookin' like a well-worked over lazy rabbit. Or a hairy hare.

_Whatever._

I was still gonna make mincemeat out of him sometime.

A blizzard of soft touches winded over me, except they weren't meant to be soft at all.

Bella was punching me, crying in great, sloppy, loops of tears.

I could hear her now, clearly. But I didn't want to, "You… _you._" Another scrape along my forearms and more goddamn crying, "He could have _killed _you, Eddie!"

"Maybe," I made light.

"Wolves live to kill vampires."

"I know this," I held her face and swallowed her tears with my lips and my thumbs.

"And you hurt him!"

"Yeah," I agreed, puffin' out my chest a bit.

"You're such a dick sometimes," she pinched my ass and knocked my head, but not the right one.

_True._

"What the hell was all that testosterone show for then?" Bella hitched up to me, and I waited for another hit, and then closed my eyes and inhaled, because now she smelled just right, just mine, all good.

I opened one eye and winked, "Just lettin' off some steam, love."

"You hypnotized me to stay put?" she accused.

"Tried to," I conceded.

"You're _my_ man," _define man, I thought, _"I love _you._ Eddie. But damn, he's my friend, and he just wanted to know I was okay."

Now I was getting' angry again.

"You realize your life is in peril, right? Jesus!"

"Not from him, not from them."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I'm not, not one fuckin' bit!" I brought her hard against me, soft cushions and love and curses and end-all, be-all, and I'd gone too far. I was goin' too far, "I'm not sure of anything."

Her voice crept up like a small secret, a tiny insecurity I never saw, never knew, never imagined, "Not even me?"

_How could she ever, of course I was… I wanted her in all the worst ways._

She changed then. Starling bright. Bitten through.

"Alice?" she needed only to say her name, and the woman appeared like a ghost. "Take me home please."

"Bella!" I launched after them, but Alicemet me with the block of her palm repealing me. _Not now, Eddie._

I rotated around the pawed grass and the footprints and the scat and the foul smell of mine and Jacob's warfare.

I walked one way.

I walked the other.

I watched them leave.

I held my head and then what used to be my heart and then my gut, and then I stopped.

I plastered myself to the ground, where it was wet, dirty, rotten.

_Why hadn't I just told her, "Yes, Bella, my woman… yes! You are the only thing I am sure of."_

Moon to sun and setting. Just one sitting.

I rocked to my heels and woke from the spongy moss.

Bella was gone.

_Alice had been right._

I had hurt her.

_I would hurt her._

_

* * *

_

~C'mon now, Eddie's had a sonuvabitch of a night (century)…he needs a little consolin' too ;)~

Very many thanks to my awesome as fuck friend, Rowan Moon for her quick lesson in the 'Third Wife'. She's written an incredible, supernatural fic called _Broken Doll_ in which she explores and creates her own legends and lore out of the scant bit of information given in the Twi books. I implore you to go read!

**Tar Wolf legend from the Cherokee was referenced:**

_In the Tar Wolf story, the animals were thirsty during a dry spell, and agreed to dig a well. The lazy rabbit refused to help dig, and so had no right to drink from the well. But she was thirsty, and stole from the well at night. The other animals fashioned a wolf out of tar and placed it near the well to scare the thief. The rabbit was scared at first, but when the tar wolf did not respond to her questions, she struck it and was held fast. Then she struggled with it and became so ensnared that she couldn't move. The next morning, the animals discovered the rabbit and proposed various ways of killing her, such as cutting her head off, and the rabbit responded to each idea saying that it would not harm her. Then an animal suggested throwing the rabbit into the thicket to die. At this, the rabbit protested vigorously and pleaded for her life. The animals threw the rabbit into the thicket. The rabbit then gave a whoop and bounded away, calling out to the other animals "This is where I live!"_

**Blood Sport **was a little somethin' Eddie cooked up on Fuckbook. Very many thanks to the diehard, brilliant, and talented ladies who took part, offering their choice hardcore songs and some stunning artwork! Art can be seen on my blog, music can be listened to on my youtube channel…links are on my profile.

**Latest Dead Confederates video** by RMCC is beyond description! It features Rebella, it's fuckin' sexy as hell!, links for all on profile.

www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=IsnT8_xAX-Q

**Interviews!** Eddie and I were both interviewed on 'Sparkling Citrus'. Y'all can have a peek inside our minds, if you like. Links on profile, or:

Sparklingcitrus(DOT)weebly(DOT)com/character-interveiws(DOT)html

Sparklingcitrus(DOT)weebly(DOT)com/author-interviews(DOT)html

**Dead Confederates blog:** Pretty much all of the above as well as additional vids, outtakes, the only place to read the chapter teasers, as well as quite a few extras (Eddie's po-ahem-try) are on the blog. Go subscribe to have Eddie delivered to your box ;). Link on profile, or:

**Deadconfeds(DOT)wordpress(DOT)com/**

Cheers,

Rie~


	25. Star Crossed Tosser

Biggest hardcore love to two of the most dedicated betas in fanfiction—Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta!

Disclaimer: Got me a coven of redneck vamps, a double wide, a broken iPod (or four), some New South…but the rest belongs to Miss SM.

So, I keep reading these wonderful fics where the authors have the loveliest little, scant notes…yeah, not gonna happen (and probably another ridiculously long one at the end too).

I'm woefully behind on replies, but I have a great excuse. Internet connection died earlier in the week when I'd planned on getting' back to y'all (what? It's the truth! – this chapter was meant to be out on Tuesday, screwed me over); replies coming forthwith. Many thanks to all of you gorgeous reviewers!

If you're not reading the outtakes, _Rebelward Without a Cause,_ shame on you; you're actually missing a huge amount of storyline told from different POV's.

~~Let's just unofficially call this 'Eddie's New Moon'~~

Song, _Romeo and Juliet_by Dire Straits

www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=W9MzrirPrCI

Cheers, Derrydown Green.

* * *

**Star Crossed Tosser**

_Juliet, when we made love you used to cry  
You said 'I love you like the stars above and I love you till I die'  
There's a place for us, you know the movie song  
When you gonna realize, it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?_

_I can't do the talk like they talk on the TV  
And I can't do a love song, like the way it's meant to be  
I can't do everything, but I'll do anything for you  
I can't do anything 'cept be in love with you_

_And all I do is miss you, and the way we used to be  
And all I do is keep the beat, the bad company  
All I do is kiss you, through the bars of a rhyme  
Julie, I'd do the stars with you, anytime_

_~Romeo and Juliet, _Dire Straits

Hot tarmac, cold rain. The smoky air risin' up in tendrils of gray. A harvest moon, a bouncin' bright orb bobbing in the sky.

How many days had I sat in the clearing?

How many hours had I become a carving?

As soon as I heard the soft clip-clop of hooves from a group of white-tailed deer high-tailing it from my cloister, I became pure monster.

Sniffing, sneering, _aching_ to rip open their veins to watch and capture the spluttering fountains of their thick, near-sickening blood.

_Every one, every one of them met my teeth and my talons and my smirk and my death._

Five in all.

I shoveled dirt over their carcasses and found it was still night. Always night. Never light.

Remembering the drooping sloop of Bella's back when she had leant on Alice and walked away from me, I sat once more. In the middle of the road. Cars screamed and careened around me. Headlights blinded me and horns blared at me as I counted all the yellowish dashes I could see, neon, running into the distance for miles.

Standing, I raised my arms. That moon fuckin' mocked me. It jeered and grinned and thumbed its nose and gave me the finger.

Middle of nowhere.

Serene in my insanity, I ambled to the soft shoulder and kicked up shells, shale, rocks, flowers.

_Flowers._

Wild Black Eyed-Susans whose blossoms were heavy and whose seeds were as tobacco brown as Bella's irises.

_Perfume._

Karmic intuition killed me.

_You always hurt the one you love._

Fuck. That was worse than a Hallmark card or made-for-TV-movie… one that Bubba pulled a hankie out over and dabbed his eyes, like he could fucking cry anyway.

The switchblade, witch-haunt of my 'Do-don't', 'Kill-keep, 'Love-fuck' had me so far out on the Savannah Highway, I was at the compacted, stilled depths of the Combahee River.

It didn't tremble in fear. It was like glass in its stillness. It was a mirror, black and depthless with the moon's waving and hovering.

_Another night. How many?_

From our drive down to the Glades, I remembered a place. Off-road, a sign, leading down a path beside the Cherry Stand stranded out in the middle of 'not-fucking-much-happenin''.

_Cuckold Landing._

Furious. Frightful. I hastened there, as if it held all the answers to all the questions I would never ever really inspect.

Because there was just one solution.

Me, plus Bella.

I'd royally fucked up, and she hadn't done a damn thing wrong apart from walk toward me in death and put her life in danger and ask for my reassurance and told me she loved me and _fucking_ made love to me so deliriously, I still felt like I was mid-orgasm even as my mind spun in addled and misfired directions.

Dead limbs snapped as I crashed like a boar; _anything to thresh out the silence._

_Cuckold Landing._

_Fuck you._

Stilled, muted, mutating and raking back my hair to come up with handfuls of leaves and pine straw and assorted other of nature's defecation, a soulless invective exploded from me into a sardonic rash of laughter. It transmuted into a growl, ripping shards through the heavy, inky, black sky.

Into the copse, like a corpse, decomposing limbs of trees snapped at me like bared teeth as I sought to put it all back together again in my head… all these goddamned, godawful, messed-up puzzle pieces. And my teeth gnashed at my own unsighted ignorance.

_She would do anything for me._

To the landing past Jacksonboro, almost to the turn-off to Beaufort, and back again. I saw the huge, hulking shapes of putrefying gargoyles, but they were just turkey vultures perched on top of telephone poles, telegraphing with their beaks that there was my breed of danger in their midst.

Cathedrals rose from the dust-ash of the roadside. But they were no more than tiny, white, wooden chapels, stained-glass windows few and far between. The din of gospels rang as the sun bandied back and forth in rising.

_Charlatans. Snake charmers. Holy Rollers. Pentecostals, penitents, those… believing._

I walked past, no more than a ghost.

Ramparts like the garrison of Volterra's castle were nothing more than unrepaired and faded picket fences limping around lawns, begging for a fluid ounce of rain.

Strongholds had me shaking as I made my way back. There was nothin' but chain-link reining in pit bulls bred to destroy trespassers.

_Pit bulls, Volturi._

_Same thing._

Days?

Nights.

I fell to my bed and drowned down. I punched my one, thin pillow. I grabbed a pen and paper and kicked the shit out of my piano until its skewed limp resembled mine.

_**Danger, desire, endangered, deranged, devoid.**_

Well, that sure as fuck wasn't much of a love note.

_Blood blood, love love._

Fuck.

"FUCK!"

I just wanted.

Just.

Wanted.

_Her._

Selfish, selfless?

Reflection didn't fuckin' suit me, at all.

Exhausted—_I laughed mirthlessly_—by all I desired so strongly that I'd kill just about anyone who came between us, I daydreamed, night-dreamed, never slumbered but thought and thought and fought with myself, my blankets, my cock, my phone that I finally threw to the floor and crushed so definitely it became one with the braided rug and lino.

_Human._

_Nature._

_Nurture._

_TAKE HER!_

_Vampire._

_A vampire wired to a mortal?_

_Sinner._

I wickedly smiled and licked my lips and almost went to her right then.

But I stopped.

_Sinner._

That was me.

_Sanctified._

Bella.

Us?

_~~ll~~_

Tits swayed over my mouth, hanging like pendulums I couldn't catch with my tongue. Tied down, I couldn't move from beneath the chenille bedspread as she savagely fucked me with every womanly curve of her body…riding me until I screamed and I could see the creamy drops of her cum dowsing me, I could _feel_ each driplet over the interlaced veins of my cock, which fought harder then softer then needier, _greedier_, inside of Bella as she slid to my side and held on for her life with every grunting, corporeal lunge I gave her.

I could only move my hips, my dick, up into her. All else was weighted, my cock was the bobber. Her pussy, my lure. Her heart, my interment.

Sun incised me. Scalped me.

Hurt me.

Made me realize I wasn't asleep, I wasn't dreaming, I wasn't anything fuckin' close to _being._

Rolling over and hugging my hard-on and reliving my day dream and wanting to lick out all the poontang of Bella's cunt, I jerked off so quickly there was nothin' but the pillar of my cock to my hand, raising cum and venom and spilling in toxic junkets over my hips and beyond, loudly spraying the wall and floor.

_This was no release._

I imagined Bella humming up my erection and licking every white ampoule into her lips, lapping, smiling, and wiping her lips.

"Get the fuck up," a booming, masculine voice desiccated my fake sleep. _Bubba._ "I gotta burn the sheets and air out all the mattresses." He rolled me off the bed and bundled everything up and looked on my dumped form.

"What. Fucker?"

I merely raised one eyebrow.

"Holy Whorebag. You don't know the super-bugs are comin'?"

Unsticking myself, I pulled a two-day-old pair of jeans out from the growing pile in the corner and snickered, "We got bed bugs now, Bubba? Good thing we cain't sleep."

"Fuck off, bro. Dr. Oz said they're headed south. You should thank your lucky stars I'm here to look after you, before you become all _Body Snatchers _and shit."

I threw my sledgehammer fist against his scruffy head, wrestling him in sheer disbelief, "SARS? Avian Flu? MRSA? BED BUGS!" Every utterance punctuated by another blow to his thick skull. Oh, he musta been tokin' up on his light machine for his fake Seasonal Affective Disorder (even though it was the height of summer)—SAD, that said it all-because he was full of vim and vigor, just laughin' me off and trundling away with every single piece of my bedding. And me? I was full up on piss and vinegar.

Just a few months ago, we'd been in opposite positions, me wakin' his non-sleepin' ass up with a sonic _crack_ to his cranium. Back then all's I'd been able to think of was Bella—nothing at all had changed in that regard. That gorgeous waitress… the one who wouldn't talk to me, who'd stumbled into me, landed face first into my crotch. The woman-girl whose mind I hadn't been able to untangle with the fingerling push of my thoughts… the chick who had made my dick whine and pine and pound… _who'd made me take leave of my usual sensual senses so all I could do was beat off, endless-fuckin'-ly instead of fuckin' any woman I wanted, whenever I'd wanted. Immortal and mortal alike._

_Bella._

She would take down my order, lickin' the flinty tip of her pencil that was as charcoal as my lust-filled eyes takin' in her Daisy Dukes and tied-up top and tied-up hair and flip flops… and legs. Legs. Legs.

While the female truckers with lady-lovin' tendencies and the butch fishermen and the seersucker-suited, Lacoste-wearin' downtownies alike had all accosted her voluptuous vision with their own fantasies.

_Sissy, because I'd wanted to fuck her just as much as I'd wanted to bleed her out, magma stream drop by tiny drop, and then keep her close and safe and safe and protected… and close. _In my bed, under my arm, under my body, around my dick.

And I'd asked her out and kissed her, tried to kill her—almost—killed _many_ for her, taken off, pushed her away, pulled her back, apologized, laughed more'n I ever had. Made love. Fucked. Been sucked off. Eaten her out. Showered her, loved her, spoiled her, _tried_ to cook for her, denied the part of me that wanted to… _make her unbreakable, like me. _ I'd ignored the three-quarters, then one-half, then one-fourth, and now the one-sixteenth part of me that still salivated just in her perfumed nightingale-nightshade presence to taste that part of her that folded in blue rivers beneath her tissue.

I'd confessed.

I'd been so jealous I'd almost killed a fuckin' entire population. Includin' Chester-cheese-dick the Walterboro Redneck, Eye-of-Newt Newton, and Receptacle-Ravaging-Rover**.**

_I'd fallen in love._

I'd maimed and mangled enemies as well as her friend.

I'd been immutable and insatiable for full-on-fuckin' fighting.

Because I weren't no pussy and there was never no waylaying the intense primacy that would always, _fucking always_, overtake me when Bella's life was anywhere near danger.

Sliding to my knees, I lay my forearms across the piano stool that had met Bella's ass, not that long ago. Reaching across, I lifted the lid and tinkled the keys and they sounded out of tune, bronzed, cast. Like me. _Wrong._

I scrubbed my face with both palms, washing and wishing away.

I jumped out my stupid double-wide's bedroom window, then stopped in the long dirt drive to pick up the Moultrie News, running over the headlines. I slapped the paper against my thigh, _those goddamn dogs!_ "Coyotes Return?: Wild canines have been sighted on Daniel Island scavenging at dawn on trash day… reports have come in from Mt. Pleasant in the Patriot's Point area of huge, hairy dogs foraging along the tourist areas… Eyewitnesses…"

The pooches were gonna get us screwed if they didn't tone it down a bit, and I didn't give two shits they needed to outsource to support their enormous appetites.

Next door at Mr. Texas-Penske-Driver's house there was a pyramid of precariously places Schlitz cans to rival the Pharaoh's tombs. I stomped once and sent that shit toppling with a noise like aluminum bowling pins and a machine gun _rat-a-tat-tat_ as they settled to the concrete apron forming the front yard.

I heard Bubba whining in the background, "Aw, man. The PBS replaced Cyberchase with RuffRuff Man!"

Feeling so bad, stupid and in love, needful and wanting more, I worried the visor of my camo baseball cap into the peak I preferred, tucked my finger to my lips and then scratched behind my ear. Realizing I probably looked like a damn dog myself, I dropped my hands and slouched against the mailbox. Not with all of my weight, _no_, because then the thing on its four-by-four post would be nothing more than a pulverized mound of metal and wood.

_All these weeks and all these feelins and I felt dizzied, like I needed to breathe into a brown paper bag, just like Bubba had when faced with his woman, and his old girl, and Eleazar._

Well, screw that.

I dragged in a deep breath of dry-dirt-dust and punched the industrial-sized ashtray at Delilah's homestead next door,and like a Weeble it wobbled and just came right back at me…japing at me until I friggin' origamied the tan plastic into a crucifix the likes of which Franklin Graham would be proud… _possibly_, if he was a chain-smokin' Luddite…

A couple hundred Lucky Strike butts rolled around.

I almost felt bad, because I was sure the fuckers were gonna get fined by the newly created Luxury Hollow's Home Owner's Association through no fault of their own.

_Hey, at least Monsieur L'isiana across the way would be happy for a change. _

All this commotion, all this menace… _they know about her… The One._

_My_ one.

It was the _one_ thing I'd never wanted, to love so hard it hurt to breathe, hurt worse not to breathe, _fucking ended me not to see her._ And then the other thing, Bella was on their radar. Bella was in their scope, Bella was exposed.

_Jesus._

I had no other place to go, so I walked back up onto the porch. Jizz had appeared from the thinnest air. He doffed his hat, shored his toothpick to one side of his mouth, pulled down the shit-eating grin he'd been sporting and greeted, "Mornin'…"

At his pause I raised an eyebrow.

_Well, I'd gotten kinda used to calling you 'Sunshine', _he thought.

"But you're lookin' like death warmed up," he finished.

"No shit," I deadpanned.

Em knocked his elbow to Jazz's side with all the gentleness of a front-end-loader so Junior's Stetson fell further over his blond forelocks, and then they were both sniggering and whispering, like that made any difference.

Devious cunts.

I gave one middle finger, imperiously, "Fuck." Then employed the other, "You."

"Oh man, don't blame me," Jazz tried to finagle his fucking way out of my wrath, going so far as to take his toothpick out of his mouth and point it at his cohort as they huddled over the duct-taped-together laptop.

"No you don't, Rear-ender, I was just searchin' Craigslist for some used romance novels," Bubba made all innocent. _What, braw, they had some good shit in the 70's._

Crossing my arms to contain myself from compactin' their foolhardy heads together, I bit, "And this is how y'all are gonna cheer me up?"

Patting all his pockets, Jizz came up with a fresh straw and held it aloft like he was Edison and he'd just invented the lightbulb, "Well, it was either this or Bristol Palin on 'Dancing with the Stars'."

"Shut your gaping piehole, ass-fucker," I feigned a smack, so close to deliverin' it the air whistled past his face and the _woosh_ of my force flattened his cheek to bone, his mouth to teeth.

_That almost satisfied me._

Bristol Pubescent Princess Palin, poster child _for_ teenage pregnancy. Jesus Cunting Christ. Since when the fuck was she a star? _What? _Her claim to fame was getting knocked up and having a big-mouthed, fake-faced, Vice Presidential candidate for a mother? Yeah, well done ABC.

_Dire straits indeed._

So what? Instead they set me up a Craigslist account and stuck a goddamn m4w ad to it?

I wrenched the laptop from Bubba's thighs and balanced it on the railing, glowering at the screen to read:

**_Undead Redneck for Beautiful Heiress with Cock/Drug Addiction Potential – 17 and then some (The Country)_**

**_Date: 2010-06-25, 9:54AM EDT_**

**_Reply To This Post _**

**_Are you daddy's little girl? It's time to mix it up with some redneck. I own a double-wide trailer. DOUBLE-WIDE! For all you sheltered girls, that means you can stand up in the living room. I take my job seriously, because I'm a businessman. My meth lab takes up the kitchen, so we're gonna have to hang in the bedroom. If you get uncomfortable in the trailer; NO PROBLEM! I'm gonna be perfectly happy in your BMW. I've got some moonshine that will take the finish right off your David Yurman bracelet. Then I'll let you ride me in your front seat, don't worry though, my vampire venom cum will only enhance that Europeen new-car-smell in your imported auto._**

I chuckled in spite of myself, "Got any replies yet?"

"Dude, you ain't that much in demand," Bubba began to get out the daily dozen beers.

_Well, he got that right._

I declined the brews and ambled down the steps, takin' good care to snarl at the fat fucking blue-tailed skink that liked to sun himself on the bottom stair.

"Where you goin'?" Bubba hollered.

I just shrugged my shoulders, gripped my keys and kicked the pebbles out of my way.

_~~ll~~_

I didn't go anywheres.

I went _all over_ my life, my past, my love, my woman in my mind until my eye twitched and I forgot where I was.

_Again._

Looking around, I made it out to be noon and I was at Mepkin Abbey. It'd been awhile since I'd needed this place.

The jolly monks may have taken a vow of silence, but that didn't extend to their minds. One particularly flustered friar saw me at the end of the garden, at the bottom of a path, lowered to the stone column, part of the sculpture, so still I had turned to marble. With my hands pressed to my thighs, balanced on my heels, my elbows back behind me like bony wings, my hawk-like grim grin, he broke through with a flood of Hail Marys.

_Ghoul._

The chickens started. Startling me. Their beaky screech plucking me to motion.

Somewhere else, possibly another day, I peeled my eyes and opened my ears to the roar around me. Inside a concrete box, just like a casket. _Ha ha, just like my heart_, I laughed harshly. I coughed because my voice was like razor blades, unused and rusty. Dulled and cutting. Black, flaky bars armed off the windows. Coulda been a penitentiary, but I guessed I'd incarcerated myself in a disgusting bar.

Drum beats dulled. Blacks and whites and drunks and doctors and students shuffled around the molten, cold darkness. A lightbulb hissed behind my head and blinked out after four flickers of strobe light. Lazily, I propped my elbow to the table, _too heavily_, and it began to careen to the floor with all my solid weight.

I righted it, but it still teetered. The floor was a stinky mat of butts and the gum of spilled drinks.

Mashing my lips together, I sniffed one of the twenty foggy tumblers in front of me… _bourbon_.

I felt for my wallet, was amazed to still find it in my pocket, threw a bundle of bills on the table where they fanned out like a deck of cards.

Unused to standing, _I guessed_, I stumbled over my feet.

A buxom broad with milky white cleavage and straw blond hair clasped my wrist with fingernails in all sorts of bright designs, "You okay there?"

Her drugstore perfume smelled cheap, her lips were lewdly painted, but her thoughts were as genuine as the clear blue eyes guardedly guiding me out the door.

Under the streetlamp, I shaded my eyes, felt for my baseball cap, scratched behind my ear, ran the pad of my thumb over the curve of my bottom lip, "Yeah."

In the pool of night light around us, I saw the tattoos covering the inside hills of her boobs. Four leaf clovers. They almost kissed each other.

She smiled faintly, lifting her eyebrows, "Luck."

I looked away and dug out my keys, pressed the button so the bastard would tell me where the hell I'd parked it. Right over there, across the street with three pink tickets shoved beneath the windshield wipers.

"Yeah, well, I'm fatal."

"I doubt that." Again her fake nails rose to me, halting in front of my face. And once more, her look was too searching.

"You're fated," she stepped back and nodded me towards the Bronco. "There's a difference, you know."

As I pulled away, this lovely sideshow lady kissed her fingertips and gave me the peace sign and mouthed, "For good luck."

Dawn tilted over my eyes.

Luxury Hollows unfolded in the newness of daylight faltering, gathering, gritting out the shadows.

Bubba was pacing. He'd created a long track of barren ground amidst the slightly less deadened tufts of grass of the yard.

"Where ya' been? Paw said to leave you to lick your wounds and Maw said-" he sniffed me and fell back, ""Fuck, dude, you stink worse than them rat-assed, rapier-teethed rapscallions."

"What did Maw say?" I bruised my fingers to the nape of my neck again and punched my keys inside my hand, remembering that Bella had every single key to everything I owned, including whatever remained of my soul.

Coiling my arm, I threw the keyring as far as I could and stood still until I heard it slurp into the muddy swamp basin at the back of the trailer.

Quicksand sucked them down and fiddler crabs clattered over the metal with the _ding-ding _of their chitin claws_._

Leading the way to the trailer, Em plied, "Well, she weren't happy. You know how she gets with the telephone." He ringed his left ear with his pinkie as if still hearing her shout. "You coulda called, man."

His eyes were so gold they glowed like hops, and the loop of his fists let go of each other to pummel against my back, "We been through a lot, Eddie. I mean," he beat me in my sternum, "you're like my brother, and we're going ta set this shit to rights."

Opening the whiny screen door, I saw that Bubba had detailed the entire double wide in his efforts to rid us of bed bugs. All neatened and clean and pristine and not one scent of Bella was left.

In terror, I looked around, glancing off every available surface, "What did Maw _say_."

"She said she's gonna knock you into next week soon as she catches up with you."

"Anyway," Bubba went to my room and returned, pushing something soft, silky, fragranced, _Bella_, into my hands, "I din't warsh this."

Her skirt.

A yellow skirt.

I inhaled and braced myself.

"You didn't answer my question, dick cheese. Where have you been?"

"The Recovery Room," I sank to the couch.

"No shit!" Em stuck his hand to my forehead and glued two fingers to my neck as if he was checkin' my pulse, "The emergency room? You okay?"

I was nearly too tired to answer or bulldoze him aside, "No, man. The bar. On the Crosstown, downtown. Intersection of President and Crack Street."

Relief catapulted inside him, _he'd thought I'd gone off to get myself topped._ "Hey, you got some hits on your personal ad while you were out."

"Did I?"

"Dude, it's been two days."

_Two days? And how many more?_

"What?" I spun her cloth between my fingers, mesmerized by the ruffles.

"You ain't seen Bella in," he counted off his fingers, "seven days."

_Oh hell. No. God, no. No wonder I was so unsettled… and Bella, how could I have…_

A week?

Adrenaline roared through me as I leaped out of the trailer to find my keys in the swamp, a bellow on my lips rippling the weak tide and pushing it back, "Bella!"

Wiping my hands of mud and running in seconds-fast to my truck, my phone rang.

It was in my front pocket. _Huh, last thing I remembered was destroyin' my cell._ Where the fuck had this come from?

_M'Esme._

"I just called to say I'm driving by y'all's house,"—_most irritating southern habit ever_-she steadied into her stern voice, "_And boy, you better skedaddle over to the Swans' and sort yourself out."_

I skidded to a stop, "Why's she at Surly Swan's?"

"He has a shotgun."

I chortled, worriedly, "So? Not like it'll harm me."

"_But Bella wishes it could."_

Em blustered out and yelled, "Wait! This one reply here sounds promising: 'Good ol' big gal right down the road. U R so sexay. The trailer sounds like mine. Text me N send a pic, have rubber sheets."

His gigantic laughter sent me forward.

_Dickhole._

I'd never wanted to get to Bella faster.

_~~ll~~_

"No." Charlie pronounced, and he weren't jokin' around. He barred the door with his body and fired up his shotgun, aiming down the barrel, making sure it was fully loaded and ready to go off.

It didn't fuckin' matter, of course… _but it mattered._

_Shit._

I'd spent half an hour staking out Bella's old house, stalking back and forth outside with my cap in my hands—pulling it slowly apart—and my heart-thing on my sleeve before I'd even knocked on the door.

'_No.' _I nodded to myself; that was right. That was just.

Because I should be dead already.

Because, the visions of Bella's last few days put his long mustache to quivering. And I saw it all. _The rumpled bedspread thrown aside, her legs kicking, her breath hitching with sobs sickening out just half my name before she screamed. Charlie turning on a light in the hall and looking in, shaking his head and covering her still-quaking body back up. Three hours later, a blood curdling cry, "No! I won't let you do this, don't let me go, I can save us!" and her eyes were wild transparencies hovering between this life and this death as her father goddamn begged her, "Please, Bella, please sleep." Rocking her in the chair I'd sat on. _

This here man picked up the pieces.

The dry tinderbox of her wails ignited me, chewed another gash into me where I'd thought myself untouchable.

"Of course, Sir," and for the first time I wasn't taking the piss as I bade him goodnight and watched the door close.

_But I never said I'd leave._

I listened to her heart beating.

I sat against a tree.

I heard her father turning off all the lights, checking the locks, closing the windows and, lastly, lookin' in on my woman.

I continued my march below her window, following the yellow circle thrown down from the streetlamp above, just as she'd walked around and around the path of light outside Maw and Paw's the night I'd raced after The Fuckface from Frigiliana, in exactly the same posture I'd used as I'd worked over the track in the clearing after Bella'd left with Alice.

But I wasn't in a trance anymore.

I first heard the lock turning with a scrape. Then the window slowly rising, whinging, clearly in need of a squirt of WD-40; I made a note to bring some over next time. I didn't dare look, maybe she was just gonna chuck a shoe at me or somethin'—though if she was, I hoped it was one of them silky, ribbony, wedge things. My dick thumped at the thought, and I adjusted myself to the left and over my thigh, and waited.

The aroma of her blood ran out over me in whispering juicy secrets known only to my flesh, I caught it with a surreptitious whiff.

Silkily, she threw her voice-not her shoes-down, "Not gonna serenade me, are ya'?"

Shielding my eyes in case I saw hate, or too much hurt, or the end of the line, I gnawed on my lip and lifted my irises. Bella leaned on the sill; her eyes weren't too bloodshot. Her lids not too puffy. She didn't look too cut-up.

Her lips were kissable as ever.

"No, uh…" I dragged my hand to my neck and cracked a few vertebras with the simple pressure of my fingers digging in. I shoved my other hand into my pocket, stared down at my unlaced Timberlands, "Your father forbade me to come in."

She angled further out until her tits pushed against the sill, "I thought you said that 'Invite Only' stuff for vampires was just mumbo jumbo."

"Yeah," I skittered to her face again and inhaled so deeply, imbibing and memorizing the point of her nose, the plump of her mouth, the color in her cheeks, her widow's peak, her freckles, her thoughtful, quizzical gaze. _Fuck, I'd missed her._ Roping in my need to reach up, run up, break wood and glass just to get to her, I grimaced away from her total loveliness, "It's just, I was tryin' to be respectful."

Another shard of wood splintered down to the ground as the pane of glass squealed up the frame and Bella laughed hysterically and hooted so loudly she scared off the barn owl in the tree two feet over and I had to _shhh_ her.

Wiping her eyes, lickin' her lips, she demanded, "Aw hell, Eddie, get your ass up here."

Takin' in her girlhood bedroom again, I ventured only just within the perimeter, because to look at her was to worry; to get close was to want more.

She crossed her arms over her bust and made it thrust up even more.

_Well, I couldn't not say hello to her knockers, could I? That was just plain rude._

But it wasn't her tits I saw when I finally hefted my eyes to her, it was her neck, held just gingerly to one side.

White gauze was patching her wound where she'd taken Beef-Jerky-Breath-Jake'sbowie knife to her skin.

Frowning, I unwrapped her, kissing the worried, raw scar to heal it instantly, "Does it hurt?"

She sighed and folded her arm around my neck, "Yes, Eddie. It hurts. It _hurts_ that you don't trust me."

Inside the moist glen of her hair against her collarbone, I craved, _I hated this_, "Why would you do this?" I jolted away, closing her closet door against some other boogeyman, "Why would you _ever_ look for me?"

Sitting back on her bed and falling to her elbows so the pretty slip she wore laced higher up her thighs and fondled lower over her tits, Bella announced, "You may be an asshole, but you're _my_ asshole."

I smiled, she'd said that before.

"Don't you get all soft on me."

"As if that could ever happen," I chucked her thighs open and let her know just how hard I was as I lay on top of her, grinding into the soft patch of her snatch and the spun-sugar lips still hidden from me.

She grabbed the mane of my hair and held me off, "I ain't done with you yet, _lover._"

Her chamois eyes shaded.

Even while she told me off, she stroked the suede of my biceps. I took off my shirt to aid her caresses, half-listenin' to her diatribe, "You just can't _do _this shit, Eddie… you left me alone… I had to find my way back."

She smacked me on my ass, and hell if that didn't make me want to get good and gone inside her pussy, right there, right now.

"Fuck, if you spank me again, Bella, I won't be responsible for my actions." I growled, wantin' nothing more than to shoot a repository of toxic cum into her.

"Maybe you better get off me then. Because I _really_ want to hit you."

_Shit, and she wasn't talkin' about playful slaps either._

I rolled to my back, pulled my forearms over my face. My stomach buckled, and I heard her sitting up beside me. I started, "I'm a vampire, Bella," I stole the listening image of her to my treasure trove of memories. Her hair a wild haven, her lips and heart beating out my hammering Heaven.

"You're my _woman_, and it just don't matter how capable y'are… as a human_, _you are_ breakable._"

She popped her knuckles, thumbed my chest, and listened, still undecided.

I was on my knees in front of her, not in supplication but in mutual ownership, I touched her breast lightly, then my grotto-heart, "You are mine, just as surely as I'm yours, and I will _NEVER_ stand back and allow you to be hurt."

My teeth ground inside my mouth, sending chills over Bella.

Hardened to crystal, she straightened, "Only by you?"

Frowning, I jolted away, meeting the corner of her room and denting the wallpaper in so the chain of flowers crushed into a blended bouquet.

Buttressed on one hand, I saw her over my shoulder, all hopeless, almost topless, tangled up in her nighty, all messy with me. Staging forward, I gave out, "I can't control it. Bella, _fuck_!"

When I thought of her being killed or taken or made by another vampire, I was burst through with primacy. Lethal intent. Some sort of manic possession stored deeply in my unmoving malachite marrow.

Awkwardly, I sat cross-legged on the foot of her bed. "Darlin'," I whispered until the hush of my new soft tone melted her a little bit toward me, "You think too much of me," my sad smile folded up and down and then drowned. "For all my skill, for all my ability to meander through thousands of thoughts and ideas… _I have tunnel vision where you're concerned._"

"Me too," Bella leaved forward more, meeting my knees with hers.

Just that scant touch boiled me.

"I… _I need to keep you safe_," I pleaded and scattered away and succored to the floor again, a sneer on my mouth, "Safe from everyone but me." Spreading my palms, I showed them to her… these things that had touched her skin. Then I precisely took the foul t-shirt smellin' of dog sweat that had been stokin' my fires since I'd entered her room and sheared it within one second until all that remained was a tiny pile of cotton confetti.

"This is what I do."

I bit my finger and looked at her dirtily, walking round and round her bed, "So, love, you see, when I get the chance for a," I halted and planted my feet, "_skirmish_, I get a release so fulfilling. I don't have to stop, worry, wonder if I'm gonna fucking kill someone I love." My lip curled, and her heart stilled and still I didn't stop my tirade.

Treading again, "In the moment… it's a goddamn relief I can't ever explain. When all I want is forever and never and nothing and everything and all the goddamn world is breathing its funky-ass breath on me and tryin' to take me down; _I just need to fight. Kill._"

Her cheeks fell, her hands fell, she fell.

I felt.

I felt her locks, moving them away, one strand at a time until I could see her expression.

_Accepting._

_Sad._

"Don't do this, love." She blinked her nubuck eyes. I laughed, made light, "I'm sorry, sometimes I just need to kick some fucking ass without repercussions."

Just then my phone chirped like cunt-fucker cricket. I, _uh_, barked into the receiver, "What?"

Jizzper, "I'm just drivin' by the Swans'. I know you're there, so I thought-"

I turned my back and beat out, "I'm tryin' to gaddamn apologize here."

Mashing the cell, I went back to Bella.

She overlooked me.

Lured me in.

I took off my clothes and bedded against her.

Inside her neck I mouthed, "It's like coming down from a high, a bender."

She shuffled back to me and brought my hard cock between her thighs.

"You spin so luminously, love," I spread my thumbs over her nipples, "_Everyone wants you."_

"I feel it all; and I can only unleash against the wolves, a new world of adversaries."

Snuggling and holding dearer, I moaned, so ecstatic to have her in my arms, "Everyone was safe! Just for a minute. And I fuckin' short-circuited. _I just didn't say what I should have said._"

An elbow feather-lit to my hips and she lay above me, "That was the one goddamn time you didn't just blurt out-"

I pressed her lips, "I love you, Bella Swan."

Smelting against me, she fished to my chest, "I love you so much, Eddie Cullen."

"Don't go leavin' me again." I couldn't curtail my rough decree.

"You left me!" She orbited over me.

_Back to square one._

"Jesus Whore, Bella, you think I'm gonna bring you along when I go off to kill for you?"

The satin on her thighs bled away from me, "But you would if I were a vampire." A charge, not a question.

Making her pillow hill to me, I answered, "Reckon I wouldn't have much choice."

Her bedside lamp shimmied on with the click of her fingers, "What do you mean?"

The short, dark satin mingling against her long, cream lushness raised another inch on her thighs. "Newborns are incredibly strong."

"You mean I could kick your ass?" Bella squeezed my butt.

"Probably," I knew immediately I'd said something I shouldn't have; her eyes sparkled and speared me.

_Faster, stronger._

She started giggling, "You thinkin' of the _Bionic Woman_ theme song?"

A giant grin on my lips had me hugging her, "Uncontained, unable to be captured, almost indestructible."

_Maybe she already was._

"You've never mentioned this before," she shed her snakeskin of satin and hotted to me.

The monumental feel of her tits, the wobbly firmness of her ass, the bite of her hipbones, they all distracted me.

Impoverished for her taste and weight and eroticism, I hurled her down to the mattress and came against her, with my hard-rock cock and my wide-ropey chest scratching her stuck-up nipples, "You weren't ever interested."

Perspiration dampened between us, making my pubes moist and matted. My dick felt so massive. A slippery wealth of her wetness webbed between my cock and her pussy until all I heard was the slapping of my shaft and slurping suction as I pushed back and forth, holding my boner down to her cunt, enveloped in Bella's swollen, soused sex.

Gasping and writhing, she kicked out the sheets and mangled pillows. She bit at my shoulders and lapped my throat as I strained to fuck her, "Maybe I am now… _interested._"

I jerked and one hemp of cum bowed her pussy in a creamy white wire. I slapped my hips to hers and thudded my head to her shoulder, "Are you?" I hoped, and wanted to be disinterested, _immune_… I was terrified and never more turned on by the idea of having her, _having this_, for the rest of forever.

"I don't know."

My nuts were shockingly tight, and this infuriating example of humanness worked me over, and under.

Another push, another purr, another thrust outside her rouge-ridged interior and I came again, more mightily as she smiled and toed up my thighs as her own spill sped between us.

_And this was just a hump. _

My wrist to my mouth so I shouldn't, wouldn't suck-bite hers, I held a hand to her jumping tummy, "That was good."

"Yeah," she tucked in on herself, towards me.

Our sticky-tacky release looked good on her.

"True-blue make-up sex next?" I asked.

"I don't think so, babe," Bella stifled a yawn.

_Shit-a-goddamn._

She murmured, "We've been takin' this too fast."

A broken, hysterical laugh convulsed me, "Too fast?"

This was all too fast, too clamoring.

Death knells and dirges and dogs and Eye-talians were nipping at our heels.

She weren't ready to yield; yet I begged**, **"You expect me to backtrack after havin' fucked you?"

This helter-skelter, off-kilter bullshit was _ending_ me.

I was already sporting another full woody.

"Yeah, I do." She said. Her damp fingers and dusky diamond eyes and her heartbeat all duned over me like a surplice. "I want foreplay." _I could do that, in my non-sleep._ "I want honesty." _I'd try._ "I want to touch your cock," I cried out at just her words and lifted my hips, "and to know you'll be focused right on me, never thinking about your past escapades or the future too much."

Roughly**, **I grabbed her hair and spun her to me, "You think I'm wantin' someone else now?" I spread her lips open with my fingers and fondled around the sweet-gold ocean of her slit.

She shook her head as much as my grip allowed, "No!"

"Foreplay, huh?" I hung over her like a draped cloth and dipped my cock to her, my balls swagging against her cleft, my lips pursed to her nipples.

Then I sat to my heels.

I _heeled._

I'd healed.

A torrent of gushing lushness broke over Bella in waves. She scrabbled up and spread her legs.

_I wanted to make her laugh. I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted her to know I only ever smiled because of her._

_I wanted to see her happy again, unworried, unhurried._

Nothin' was sexier than Bella enjoying life, the life I wanted to hate so I could make her mine.

All feminine musk and arching back, she looked… _alive_**.**

"Okay." I unrolled the sheets like billowing sails until they covered us.

She smirked and held the covers to her neck like she was a virgin even though her legs rubbed between mine, like my lover, "Just like that?"

"Honest Injun, I won't touch you until you ask for it."

_I was such a liar._

"You are so lying, Eddie."

Back to jaggin' off, wanking… _tossing._ Probably a good thing, since my bed was in a shambles and still not made up after Bubba's tear against the goddamn bed bugs.

I gave it another go though. Hell, I was nothin' if not persistent. I stood and held up my balls and stroked my shaft a couple times before joinin' Bella below blankets, meshing my body to hers and lowering slowly on top of her. Tickling the sweet ivory arch of her neck with my tongue, placing long, wet kisses under her chin and down to her collarbone and over the top mounds of her tits, kneading my swollen cock right into her pussy and meshing our flesh together. I worked over her, panting and groaning, up on my palms beside her shoulders, massaging her nipples with my chest.

Her hands slipped from my throat to my chest, her mouth slid from my jaw to my lips, turning her head so she could mate our mouths. We made out for ages, a maze of limbs, a labyrinth of skin gliding, with me growling, _"Uuuh, Bella!"_ She grappled around my back and pulled me straight to her, tugged her mouth away, "I missed you, you shit." I chuckled and snapped my hips to hers again. She flat-handed me on my torso, "Now tell me what the hell's goin' on."

"It's already dark out, don't you just wanna sleep?" _and let me feel you up some more?_

"No," she curtly replied.

_Son of a slut._

"Then we best speak to Carl."

On the way to The Bluff, we passed by a new sign:

'_**If you're all wrapped up in yourself, you're overdressed'**_

I took that as… well… _a sign_ from above to start unbuttoning Bella's shirt. Or wait, was that my shirt? My eyes bugged out as her cleavage appeared with every button undone, because Bella's unbound tits toppling out of _my_ shirt was so fuckin' sexy I couldn't help but reach inside and flick her nipple.

"Eddie!"

"What? God said so," she looked at me strangely until I huffed, "Hell, Bella, didn't you see the sign back there?" She cranked around so the shirt tucked lower over her right breast, showing off a soft aureole.

"Nevertheless, 'no' means 'no'," she swatted my hands away, but left the shirt half open.

Cunningly, I asked, "Always?"

"Yes."

My hand fidgeted back and plucked open one more button, "Eddie!"

"You said yes." I smiled innocently.

"You're incorrigible." She grinned.

"You love it," I decided, _I knew it._

"Yeah," she sighed.

I leaned over and pointed my tongue to her earlobe, listening to her blood singing, her heart trotting, "Maybe I just want my shirt back."

An ingénue, she blinked at me, full of guile, "Before or after we talk to Carl?"

As if I was gonna have her bare-breasted and all bouncy boobs in front of Paw. I let her go and made do with her plunging neckline tormenting my cock into another strike of priapism.

Carl was in his den, sitting behind his desk, surrounded by reams of paper, opened and upended tomes on veterinary medicine, philosophy, poetry, vampire lore, wolf legends, and a couple Playboys.

A new specimen sat on the long, dark wood in front of him; a two-headed half-pig-half-cow fetus. A chimera.

So quiet, in mind and motion, was the black-haired Robber Bride I didn't even see her until she startled me by pulling Bella into a hug and rubbed her back, whispering, "I told you."

Bella glanced at me, her lips curved deliciously, her eyes drooped erotically.

"Shouldn't you be out committing grand larceny or somethin'?" I queried. I didn't like them havin' secrets, girl-time, girl/ghoul talks when I was on the outs.

Alice patted Bella's hand and glowered at me, "Shouldn't you be…" I saw the possibilities runnin' through her head:_ Working? No. Masturbating? Hmmm, looks like he just did. Drinking? Will be soon enough._

Finally she threw her hands up in surrender, "I've got nothing. Because you _do_ nothing, Clairvoyant Cock-"

I had to stop her there, "Hey, I'll have you know, I ain't no cocksucker. Jizzper, yes. Me, no."

Exasperated, Alice sat down.

"Look, Carl," he perked up from fiddling with his new toy, the two-headed mutant, "Bella wants to know what's goin' on."

The Little Person to my left giggled and then gave me her own guileless eyes.

I rolled mine.

"Eddie, maybe you're askin' the wrong person," he looked pointedly at Bella.

She blanched; I got all up in arms, "What the fuck? Bella don't know shit," she narrowed her eyes, "I mean, she don't know crap about this… fucked up mess.

"Assholes! Everywhere! Can't someone tell me if El Flea's gonna turn up again like a bad penny?" I shouted so the leaves of the bent open books breezed.

_Silence._

"What about Irina, for fuck's sake?" I pressed on.

"Irina's on our side," Paw confirmed.

Minnie Mouse hopped up like she was on a pogo stick, "You know, there's going to come a time when Bella will probably know more than you."

I inspected her like she was crazy, which she was, of course.

"Think about it, Eddie. Aro gets one hold on you, and he'll have everything against us. I'm almost certain that he won't be able to divine Bella's thoughts." The Pocket-Sized Pillager was in full-on filibuster mode, campaignin' for our future and I couldn't get a word in edgewise or pull a single friggin' one of her thoughts out lengthwise. "I don't know all the ins and outs, but Bella's the lynch pin, the loophole to all this."

Bella stood tall and proud, she didn't pale or shy away from these words.

Clenching my jaw, forming my fists, my nostrils flared, and I raised a hand as if to knock all the jars of formaldehyde mammal fetuses from Carl's shelves in one fell swoop. Bella touched me, hushed me, took me to a chair, sat me down, and sat on top of me, "I know, baby. You want to protect me, _I know._" She stroked my face, favoring my lips with her fingertips, "But I _need_ to know this. Okay?" Her brow furrowed. I held my frame still as granite and nodded woodenly.

The Negligible Know-it-all hunkered in front of us, all scarecrow, all corkscrewed around herself, all fishnet tights and giant tulle skirt and lace and silk and taffeta and black bloused, "Someone out there has a grand plan."

I moved my mouth just enough to say, "Who?"

Her eyes gleamed through parakeet yellow to crusted-lava, "I don't know that yet." She stared at me, "And I might not be able to tell you when I finally figure it out."

The timber of the armrest broke apart into sawdust beneath my clawed fingers, otherwise I didn't move, "I'm just supposed to let things happen?"

"You don't have a choice. It's _destiny_." She touched my knee briefly, then the empty left side of my chest, coming to rest her palm above Bella's boob, right where her heart slushed-clipped-clopped-slugged, "You and Bella are _ordained_… whatever happens, it's inevitable."

I blanked her out, _destiny_. I'd had enough of that. Cracking my fingers and tryin' to remember some civility, I cradled Bella. I had to smooth out my sculptured rigidness, each muscle at a time. I had to breathe her in and strut across her hip and her thighs and her face and hair until the permanence of my tungsten tissue remembered how to be somethin' other than _too hard._ Acute Alice slithered away, "We have no choice but to let it manifest."

"This is why you didn't warn us about Cuntass Columbus._You did know._" I impugned. She was caught off guard, and I accused again, "Yeah, I had me some _time_ to think about it." Days I couldn't remember while I'd persecuted myself just like I used to.

Alice slayed, "Strain yourself, did you?"

I placed Bella on the chair paired with mine before the fireplace whose grate was totterin' with boxes of turkey-baster sized syringes and rubber gloves. I stepped over her as Alice jumped up-_floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee_.

Outraged, I reached for her arms and thunked her down on top of Carl's desk, "You deliberately put her in harm's way!"

Carl skittered back to the windows as the desk moved with our scurrilous fight. Her face smashed, her heel came up to my nuts, I heard the crunch of somethin' otherwordly and unmeant to bend or break shatter inside my palm… _her wrist._

Writhing, Alice did some sort of mud wrestlin' move and dropped to the floor.

I raised my foot to kick her, a kittenish mewl made me pause, my _being_sheared in two. I stopped. I stilled. Just like I'd been at Mepkin Abbey, I was plastered in muteness, nothingness, a void, _avoid_.

"Eddie, Eddie?" Bella was there, but so far away.

"I tried to protect her from you, I tried to stop _you_ from making a mistake. _You're the only one who can hurt her, Eddie. You were the only one who hurt her that night._ I'd never… _this isn't a fucking fairy tale, Eddie."_

Alice bailed herself out.

"_Eddie!"_

Impeccable heat, horizons of warmth. _She_ crossed in front of me. Like a blanket, _just like a blanket._ Her scent swam to me. Arms reached round me, swaying me from my station. _Saturating me_.

_Bella, Bella._

"This was what he was like the entire time." That was Alice.

_Was it? How did she? _I blinked, I remembered. She'd been there all the while, quiet and tuned in to my tuning out. A small black dot on my radius. Watchin' over me, waiting. _Makin' sure I was okay?_

I wanted to hate her. I should hate her, right?

_She'd silently placed the new cell in my pocket,_ I saw it now_. _I'd been sitting inside the Recovery Room, spinning cardboard beer coasters and downing bourbon when she'd flashed darkly from the murk and patted my wallet then pushed the phone into my hands.

I shivered and blinked again, my eyes like tablets.

_Bella._

Corroded, my arms wound around her. A deep breath and she was a soft punctuation alive against me.

"I'd like to stay here tonight, Sir," Bella looked back to Carl.

Carl halted his sleepless, ceaseless note scribblin' in illegible script, "Course, darlin'. Esme's got all these rooms made up, she'd love nothing more than to have a full house," he caught my glimpse and looked away.

_Because I defamed everyone I loved._

Inside a bedroom of lilac and gray, I reclined against the door. I'd found my sealegs again, "I'm stayin' too."

Bella finished undressing down to her panties and opened the duvet to me, "'Course you are, baby." She looked at me like I was deranged, which I was.

I kissed her all through the night. Moths barraged the windows with their wings, called to her light. I held her hip, I strolled over her tummy. I dreamed, _awake_, about her smell of flowers and blood and words and love.

More than once, I pushed my erection down and between her legs, just to feel the purchase of her cunt.

I took her panties off, too.

With the slattern sun slighting across us, I woke her with my lips to her crown. The boggling maze of our limbs sinuated as she slanted lower, stretched, hummed.

"You have to work," I braided her hair up my arm.

"_Mmmm, _huh?"

Her lips and nipples smacked against me in delicious slow motion.

"Mama's, darlin', you have a shift."

I fed her; I was a gentleman about it all, aside from dipping my index and middle fingers beneath her pants to slide into her ass.

I dropped her off at Cranky Charlie's.

On her tiptoes, Bella kissed me so thoroughly from outside the rolled-down window of my truck, I walloped the horn and beat a hole through the roof of the cab.

I held her face and sucked her bottom lip between mine, "I want you, love."

Her smile so sexy, so beautiful, so lovely, she backed up when I put the Bronco in drive. Wonderingly, Bella wiped across her mouth, "I'll see you at Mama's?"

I looked at her like she was insane, but she was the farthest thing from it. "No doubt, baby."

_~~ll~~_

I'd had to go huntin' with Bubba first, before I saw her again. Seemed I hadn't eaten for quite a while. Them deer were the last thing I could recount.

"Open season on wild hogs in the Lowcountry, bro," Em had raced me to the outskirts of Francis Marion Forest—_boar was off-limits there, but we could catch a good haul if we sat in our blind and waited for them to cross the boundary._

Their bristles had passed my lips; their chewy glug of blood entered me. I'd been midway through one pig when I reached out my hand, pile-drivin' another to the ground.

Smeared and scented with iron, we'd opened up beers and sank against the hillocks of pine roots underground.

Our gift for Mama Brown had squealed from its harness three feet away.

"Gonna be some good sucklin'," Bubba drank.

"Wanna know what I did today?" he'd asked.

_Not really._

"Checked your Craigslist," he'd laughed.

"And?"

"Well, you got you an inbox full of offers. Cynthia-Mae was particularly amusin'. She wants to 'redecorate with blow-up dolls and chintz, and snort coke off the cistern then take you downtown to meet her Charlestonian family'," he'd finished his beer and started to throw it out across the sloppy swamp before I'd disciplined, "Recyclin', dude."

He'd blown out his chest and put the bottle back in the Igloo.

"So, Cynthia-Mae? Mandy? Mercedes? Any of them broads interest you?" Bubba'd kept on.

I'd hid my grin, "Don't think so."

"Bella, huh?" he'd growled at the boar until it pissed its scat to the ground.

"Yup," I'd tipped back the PBR.

"Y'all got a good thing there."

"I know it."

"And I'm gonna castrate you next time you blank out like that, brother," Bubba had closed his eyes—and thankfully his mouth too—thoughtfully designing the smoker he was just about to make us clobber together.

Bein' as near attention-deficit as me, he'd rallied up in my face, catching me unawares, "I also got me some Mucinex-D today… fuck if my allergies ain't actin' up. Took ten minutes; had to give 'em my license and all sorts of shit. Easier to get hold of alcohol than medicine these days."

I'd looked at him like he was a hypochondriac, which he was.

An hour later, we were pullin' up to Mama Brown's hauling a smoker we'd put together in twenty minutes from all the scrap metal in our backyard to Bubba's specs.

Showboatin', for our ladies.

All the regulars came out with the din of the cowbell Bubba was beating. Rose and Bella were in tow, their hips jutted to hold up trays of beer.

Mama swagged-skipped across the shell and gravel, boomin' in her corn cob voice, her corn cob pipe at the side of her mouth, "Pig Pullin', Y'all!"

Caleb clapped me on the shoulder, offered me a beer, saw my cooler and grinned before slopin' off.

Bella prettied to me. She drank an ounce of my drink and beamed up at me.

_So beautiful._

"You did this for me?"

"Well, _I_ ain't gonna eat this shit, am I?" I winked.

Gales of laughter followed her fine ass as she sassily sashayed away, "Oh, an' I saw you on Craigslist, baby." She hollered back, "Cynthia-Mae? She ain't got nothin' on me."

I gulped and agreed, greedily pleased with her possession of me.

Mama stood before me, all majestic. All big and black and bold, old and knowing, "You done good, Sonny Boy." The weaves of her hair in beads tolled like clocktowers countin' off the minutes I had left, "You gettin' it right, so you just keep on-a-goin'."

"Yes'm," I bowed and squired her to the picnic table.

A vibration at my hip hit me sideways.

Excusing myself from Mama, I answered, "Gaddamn Hell, if you're just calling to tell me you're drivin' by-"

Interrupted by Alice, I listened.

I almost smote my cell, a-fuckin'-gain.

I looked toward Bella, out there in the melee, makin' tips, making people happy.

"This is one of them times, ain't it?" I asked.

"Yes, you have to get out of Dodge now."

I closed the silver case.

I dodged drunkards and felt Bella's waist, "We gotta go."

She set down her orders and motioned mutely to Mama.

_Get gone, girl of mine, _Mama thought.

I opened the door of my cab. I held her hand. I lifted her up, I questioned for the last time, _"You and me babe, how about it?"_

_

* * *

_

~Thank you so much for reading! I dunno, I thought this was really romantic…I might be way wrong. Tell me and Eddie how you feel~

The nickname 'Robber Bride' for Alice comes from a novel by Margaret Atwood by the same name.

Thanks to the hilarious knuckle draggin' Redneck dude on Craigslist who gave me quite a fucking chuckle (I only changed his ad a bit):

charleston(DOT)craigslist(DOT)org/m4w/1918095413(DOT)html

The next _Rebelward Without a Cause _is coming soon, so make sure to alert! It's gonna be all sorts of ingenious and awesome.

**Don't forget subscribe to the blog** so you can get all the teasers. These, as well as the chapters, come with the most amazing 'Eddie' manips specially made and DC detailed by Lindz of Robmaniporn and MsEm Wetmore**. **I also post random DC related one-off's there. Link on profile. Very NSFW.

**New DC vidya by Crackylu Yootz and MsEm** (fucking scary, sexy awesome!): www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=7cCz8r6Le6o

I wrote an o/s; it's short, more of a poem..it's called _Jezebel_.

I think I'm continuing my _Jealousy_. Alert it.

**I'm taking part in the ****Countdown to Halloween II: One Haunted Hallows Eve****, **_creepy and sexy_ oneshots will be posted (one+ for each day in October) starting the 1st. So put it on alert! It's not a contest, just some fun, and posts will be anonymous so y'all are gonna have to see if you can guess my occultist offering ;) www(DOT)fanfiction(DOT)net/s/6326403/1/

I'm now on Facebook (yes, Eddie still is too ;)). The link is on my profile. We both haunt that place a lot, but please don't friend me unless you have a dedicated fanfic account.

See? Told ya' I couldn't STFU.

Cheers,

Rie~


	26. Monster Truck Ball

To the most divine duo, the ladies who scrub Eddie down, rap him with a rolled up newspaper, pare my words (a bit, not too much), to Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta, I goddamn love you!

Huge thanks to TheNextGayleKing (I'm just gonna call you MCGK from now on, okay?). And yes, you can stop swabbing out the DW's Winnebago toilet now. Unreal adoration to Viola Cornuta, winterstale, Derrydown Green, Lindz, Slick, and the awesome-fab MsEm. You know why.

Eddie wants to kiss each of you deliciously wicked FB femmes. I want to thank my always, superior, original DW h00rs—it's been a wild and wonderful ride with y'all, and will continue to be, I've no doubt!

To Jaspersbrand and Cullen Confection, huge ta for your bits that showed up this chapter. And lastly, to every one who stops to read and then really takes the time out to review…I fucking love you, and your ideas and comments truly do open up new dimensions of the story.

~~Welcome back, Eddie~~

_Evil, _by Eric Clapton, Derek and the Dominos

youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=y0KljS1QMkM

* * *

**Monster Truck Ball**

When I'd said, 'You and me babe, how about it?', I definitely hadn't been referring to all those other fuckers.

"Well, who's gonna watch over Charlie," I'd wheedled because, yeah, I thought I'd just been handed a free vacation with Bella, locked inside a truly mobile home. I'd _thought_ we'd be alone so I could work on getting her to have sex with me again.

"Carl's going to take him fishin'," Maw had everything already worked out, to my uncontainable disgruntlement, "And I'm stayin' to take over the girls' shifts. Cain't leave Momma Brown in the lurch."

_No, 'course not. But it was just goddamn fine and dandy to leave me and my cock in the lurch, Pavlovian boner was back to its usual pre-fucking Bella tricks, standin' at attention with every inescapable thought of her; riding me, sucking me, blowing me,__fucking me._

Early the next morning, as we'd finalized plans, Bella had echoed me, "Well, who's staying with my Daddy?"

_What the hell? I was her daddy. And I think I wanted to push her against the porch couch, blow her skirt up her body, rip her panties to shreds and tap her smartly on the ass while I screwed her into oblivion until she got so goddamn hot she knew I was her one and only sugar daddy. Yeah, because I was sweet on her, alright._

She'd huffed a little but ended with an indulgent half-smile, "I was talkin' about my _dad_, Eddie. So you can wipe the indignant scowl right off your face, _Daddy._"

_Great, just that one word and my fuckin' fantasy was more like a feature length, full-color (most as it could be with my color blindness) porno ending in naked, coiling limbs, sweat streaking down her cleavage and settlin' in the dimples above her rump, flushed and wailing with her orgasm._

Shaking, I'd growled and had half a damn mind to whip my dick out right then and there, see what she'd do if I started stroking myself with my own hands.

"So?"

"So what?" I'd still been knee deep between her thighs, driving into her sex… at least in my mind.

"Charlie?"

_Instant, goddamn mood killer, right there. Bottle that shit right up for birth control._

"Carl's takin' him on a fishing trip to Lake Manning."

She scrunched her nose, and all of a sudden she'd just looked too fuckin' adorable—_adorable. Christ, I was such a goner, it wasn't even funny_. "Does he even eat fish?"

"Is a pig's pussy pork?" One just never tired of that homily.

Falling around laughing, Bella had finally controlled herself to tilt her head and smile at me, "Guess you could say that."

My shoulders bounced with chuckles too, because I friggin' loved to make her laugh like that. 'Course it was better when we had sex; not that me fucking her was in any way laughable, but that even when it was so intense I wanted to bite her neck to suck her infuriatingly made-to-order-for-me blood _and_ sink into her pussy, even when it was dirty, indecent and raunchy as hell, our love making always ended on such a high there was no other release—after cumming and filling her up with my sweet, thick toxicity—than to laugh and snuggle and smile and kiss lazily.

_Love-making, shit-fuck, there I went again._

"I should take him with me to Captain D's sometime," she'd referred to the local fast fish food chain.

"Darlin', he likes his seafood full of blood, not fresh fried on a platter," I'd laid it out for her.

With sudden understanding, Bella had nodded and bit her plump lower lip, "Yeah, of course." She frowned, her pretty little widow's peak begged for my kiss, her sunlit freckles scattered across her pert nose and blushing cheeks pleaded for my caresses, "Sometimes it's just so easy to forget y'all are vampires and not just some inbred hick family."

_I was gonna take that as a compliment._

Mid mornin' found us churning the straggle of roadside weeds outside Pappy Police Chief's house to pick Bella up. For our 'vacation', the highlight of which would be a huge Monster Truck rally in two night's time before the coast would be clear enough for us to steer back here.

Bubba'd retrieved the rented RV…_The Road Warrior_, and brought it back to Luxury Hollows_._ And it was fuckin'… _what was that?_

They'd tramped into the Winnebago like a bunch of gypsies, laden with a ton of shit for our road trip to Florida; destination Redneck Yacht Club to be precise. In Punta Gorda… _fuck that._ I just wanted some _puta._

Poontang.

_Pussy._

An exodus, before the Cullen Family Holocaust began.

Slaughter, that's what them Volturi vultures had in mind.

I knew it right down deep in the steel marrow of my titanium bones, and I didn't need to have ESP to understand that shit.

They wanted me, they wanted Alice—they just weren't totally certain she was with us-and for damn sure now that El-Hombre had seen Bella, they'd want her, too. And then there was Jizzper, and if nothing else I was sure those cocksucking _finnochio _flamers would love to get their fingers up his hole. Fuckin' foursome of too much talent

"It's pink," Alice had supplied.

_Pink?_

"Inside and out." Jazz had quipped.

Lost in my own unsavory thoughts, I really hoped they weren't talking about what had just been on my mind.

"Hey, it's like ridin' along in the vagina highway!" At the wheel, Em had been punch-drunk at havin' a big machine to drive, and at least I'd been clued in that we were discussin' the camper, and not—_thank fuck_—Jizz's ass.

Rose had swiveled around in her captain's chair, "Don't you even-"

"What?" I'd raised my hands up to ward her off; bitches could always read my mind.

"Em doesn't have a 'small penis complex', he just likes a good ride, so don't even go there, Eddie." Rose leaned over and shoved her hand to Bubba's crotch, and he turned cross-eyed with her caress.

_Great._

Three horny couples, inside a tin box on wheels, and Bella and I were gonna be the only ones not fucking.

_Pussy 'Road Warrior'. The camper had no right callin' itself that. More like Clay Pit Warrior._

Up on the Mustachioed Minute Man's stoop, I didn't even have to knock; the door swung wide and bounced back and if that thing was gonna even think about slapping me in the face, I'd shear it off the hinges and throw it two miles away. I was that strung out.

Good thing Chaz grabbed it before _it_ nailed me.

He didn't invite me inside.

_Hell no._

He came out and surveyed the perimeter like he was a goddamn Green Beret in Afghanistan instead of the sheriff of a one-horse town.

He looked almost vulnerable without a weapon cradled in his arms, and his eyed were that dark, river-bottom brown like Bella's… _soft._ Until he remembered, and then they hardened like frozen mud all over me, "You know, I don't just let my kid go off with any old va"—_I thought he was gonna put the nail in my coffin and say 'vampire'_—"_vagrant._"

"Her mother notwithstanding." Regret wound around the newly stable constable.

I nodded, "Yessir."

Hell, I could eat me a ton of crow, if it meant keeping Bella safe for a while longer.

"I'm trusting you, buddy." _Yeah, he wanted to pump me full of lead._ He'd like nothin' better than for my body to turn up dead… yet, he wouldn't hurt his baby girl like that.

With a hand raised but not touching me—his troubled thoughts were incoherent switchblades of protection and guilt and pride and his own pain—"Bring her back, and you best deliver her unharmed."

Silently glaring at me, daring me to show I understood, Ass-Chapped-Charlie pushed his way inside me, _"I will get the truth out of you boy."_

Then, loudly, he called up for Bella and sharply said to me, "I know you're not right in the head," he stared right into me, fuckin' cop.

_I was right in the head. I was very fuckin' right in the head. I was so right in the head that my _head_ was on the cusp of explosion every time I thought about his daughter and her fucking hot figure._

Shit, I sure hoped he couldn't see into _my head_, but by the way he leaned back and grabbed his pistol, all nonchalantly checkin' the bullets in the chamber, I wasn't so sure.

"You bring her back safe and sound, boy," he flicked his thumb around the safety in silent menace.

Appearing in a flash of denim and a loose, white, peasant blouse-type-thing, Bella hugged her father, held my hand, waved him away and let me help her inside the 'Bago.

As we jerked into motion, she knocked on the oblong window and mouthed to _her dad_, "I'll call you."

I wanted to pump up Clapton's _I Shot the Sheriff_.

"Why're we headed back to the Bluff?" I was burly with the need to get the hell out before whatever auspicious omen made its way to us.

"Maw forgot my socks," Bubba hit the dashboard to make the speedometer work.

_Great._

As it was, we were crawling like a _pink_ slug up the 17N traffic, in the opposite direction we needed to be goin' in.

Esme was waiting out front.

Dead-heading the black petunias from her casket flower bed.

We all trooped out, but she had eyes only for me.

Blazing like parakeet yellow.

"You can get that pole outta your ass now, boy." _What the…?_ Why was she allowed to curse but not me? And the only _pole_ I had was aimed like an arrow at Bella's pussy.

She shoveled a laundry bag to Bubba, a calendar to Alice—not a diary…_no_. Not a little notepad with the dates. Not a clock, not even an iPhone for chrissakes, but a goddamn freebie wall calendar from none other than Gerald's Tires.

Alice took it and tacked it inside while I questioned, "Why do we need that thing, and ain't you heard of going mobile?"

"It's got Bubba's schedule for vitamins and meds on it." _Okay, as if that made it all right._

Reaching back while Bubba revved up, Maw put a tote in my arms. Paper plates. Tinned goods, Kleenex and Bounty.

_My Depression Era Maw needed to make sure we were all stocked up._

"She got us those straws I like?" Bubba hollered.

I dug into the parcel and came up with a box, "Yeah."

I turned to head inside, but Esme was right in front of me, _damn, I hated this vampire speed shit sometimes._

Hefting a stack of Garden and Gun magazines to my arms, she announced, "Thought you might need some readin' material."

I looked over the mags and pushed it back to her, "Thanks. All the same, I brought my own."

"_Hustler?_"

"No," I was surly.

"_Penthouse?"_

"Maw!" I could have blushed; Bella was watching and too interested.

"Well?" Maw tapped her foot in a perfectly human display of impatience.

"_Juggs_," I mumbled.

With a crack to my head, Esme scolded, "Don't be so brash, Sonny. So it's okay you look at those periodicals, but you don't let your woman have her toys?"

I heard Bella in the background, "Yeah!"

_I was so not having this conversation._

From her 'Kiss Me, I'm Dead,' apron pocket, M'Esme pulled out three boxes. "Here, baby girl. A _Wee Vibe_." She made the rounds. "I hear tell it's the new thing… so small you can even walk around with it in you, dear... _double stimulation too_."

_What the-?_

"Blue for Alice, pink for Bella, and purple for Rose," Esme clapped her hands and motioned me inside the camper, "Y'all have a good time now, and call me every couple hours."

"Wait!" Bubba trounced out.

Alice flung a new Nikon at him.

_Stolen from Radio Shack._

"Let's get us in the papers, '_On Vacation with the Moultrie News'_."

"Come together now."

"Eddie, that was my instep!"

"Kneel down, you're too tall, Jizz."

"Wait, her tit's blocking my better side," I looked down… _Bella's bosom was right in Jizz's face._ I took the opportunity to smack him, thereby giving the camera his other profile.

We resituated against the Winnebago.

"Okay, all together now, closer, closer, _I said closer goddamnit_… _and_ say 'Cheese!'"

_Cheese dick._

"And another," Em demanded, snapping us from all angles as if he was the paparazzi.

In the end, I headlocked him and stole the memory stick.

Being cram-packed into a caravan full of vampires and my human lover—though technically she wasn't my lover because she still wouldn't do me—with no privacy what-so-fuckin'-ever, put a damper on my vacationing mood as we trundled south on the Savannah Highway and onto I-95. Shoulda' souped this sluggish contraption up.

_Goddamn cluster fuck of stupid proportions._

And this rust bucket didn't provide any escape at all. At the table sat Bella, leafin' through her taxidermy magazines. Alice was reclinin' on Jizz's lap, flicking through a deck of tarot cards like she was getting ready for a game of five card stud, as if she needed the fortune telling cheat sheets to get our goddamn future straight.

_Worst of all, _Bella had given up the one back bedroom, justifying, "You know, since me and Eddie won't be needing it." Hell, it was only as big as a closet, but at least it had a door, even if it was likely I'd punch out the back window when I came so hard in Bella the fake wood paneling would splinter asunder. I wanted her so bad; I could taste her on my tongue as she came undone above me.

I passed the table again and looked down to see Bella's soft hand drawing up and down my forearm, circling my wrist and runnin' back up. She tugged at my thumb on the next downcurve, and my knees buckled because it felt like she… _shit, that's exactly what she did when she gave me a handjob._

Without looking up, she hooked her fingers between mine, lacing them sensually together until I almost landed on my ass, "Don't be so testy, baby."

She licked a fingertip and turned a page.

_Testy? Stop being testy? Fuck yeah, I was gonna' be testy, on account my testes were about ready to detonate._

Not to mention, Little Miss Stuffit continually shut me out of her head, refused to look at me, and generally made it real crystal clear I'd be getting' no information about who was on their way to the lowcountry or generally what the fuck the gameplan was for keeping us alive, _sort of_.

Reaching behind to a built-in chest, Jizz hauled out a game box, "Checkers, man."

_Was he kidding me?_

Only thing I wanted to play was Ring Around Bella's Posy, Naked Twister (or even titty twister), _Fuck, Fuck, Goose Her…_

Again, still focused on her magazine, Bella patted the bench beside her, "_I'm_ not playing with you, so you might as well."

Even though it shouldn't have been a challenge between mind reading me and empathic Jazz—obviously my talent trumped his-I still managed to lose at least half the matches because _the fuck_ if Bella wasn't playing with me, contrary to what she'd said. She had this innocent lilt to her lips, edged with pure naughtiness as her fingers traipsed up and down my inner thigh so close to my dick that it hardened into the longest shape right down the top of my leg, beading at the tip with venom.

Still she didn't look at me, but she had to know what she was doing.

Finally, I slammed the board shut and pounded the table, standing until my head hit the bulkhead above.

"Pit Stop!" Rose shouted, in the nick of time.

I jumped out before we even rolled to a stop at the The Li'l Cricket gas station.

It sat like a concrete boot next to a clapboard chapel whose hand painted sign sang: _Get off Facebook and get into God's Book._

I weren't no apostle, so about the only Book I'd be getting into would be the Song of Solomon.

There were brightly-colored flyers pasted all over the one window that was covered in plywood instead of glass, announcing the Four Hole Swamp Whittling Contest.

Bubba was drawn to it like it was tacky flypaper, and him a bluebottle.

He'd already set up his latest little Kama Sutra figurines on the dashboard of the Road Warrior; his own talisman…just like Maw brought her little troll dolls and other assorted good luck charms to the weekly Bingo at the VA.

He punched my arm good and hard, amped up, "Yeah! We gotta stop there."

"Go take some more Dramamine, prick licker… Four Hole's not even on the way."

So of course he bought a travel pack of the motion sickness medicine. I stood beside him in the pharmacy aisle, wonderin' what I could take for what ailed me, besides Bella's pussy with my cock.

He took a look at my strained countenance and pronounced, "You need a stool softener."

_Oh fuckin' kill me now, again._

Jizz came out with a bundle of newspapers, and a box of Stim-u-dents.

Bella used the restroom while I waited outside.

I duly fuckin' noted the display of Fart Boys next to the cash register as I squired her around, squinting at the noisy Lay-Z-Boy bastards.

Bella bought some supplies, and I perused the top shelf magazines.

When she turned to me, she had a goddamn pair of candy vampire fangs in her mouth, wiggling her eyebrows at me before sinking the sweetened shit into the bottom of my throat, digging in as hard as she could.

And I was so goddamn sick with horniness that I was turned on even more with the way she would feel, unbreakable and able to take all of me, as rough and untamed as I wanted.

"Don't tease me no more, Bella, because I'm about ready to throw you over my knee and either whup your ass, or push my fingers, fast followed by my cock, inside of you. Right over there. On that bench. In plain sight."

The Pack Rat sashayed past us, her hobo bag filled with shoplifted goods, and peace on her small, glowing face.

At times like this, when she felt relieved of her pain and past, she even looked kinda pretty.

Back inside the sardine tin, Alice laid out her haul, which included a shit lot of junkfood for Carl. "Souvenirs," she explained.

Jazz tore through his papers and came up short as we shouldered back on the road, leapfrogging the traffic that was piling up with weekenders. "Aw, man. Curtis died."

We were deep in Florida territory by now. He laid the obit section flat on the table and there was a photo of the man who'd sold us our airboat for the trip to the Glades not so many months before. We'd all known it would only be a matter of time before his liver went kaput and he'd find himself pushin' up the daisies.

It was easy to smell that kind of lethal sickness in a person.

"May he rest in peace," Jazz said, all priestly and shit.

"Summer teeth and all," I added.

"R.I.P." Bubba knocked on the dash.

"_Rippity Doo Da,"_ the latest incarnation of Fart Boy let loose.

_Was nothing sacred?_

Malice faked a yawn, and Jizz followed suit.

Bubba put aside his yarn and set his knitting needles inside a backpack.

Rose was at the wheel.

Tiredness catching like the Super Bed Bug, Bella's eyes drooped, too.

Winking at Jazz, Thumbelina slurred, "Time for a cat nap."

_Yeah, right, they were gonna fuck, the fuckers._

"I could use forty winks myself," Bella did that thing where she took off her bra under her shirt without showing me a lick of skin.

_Dammit._

I followed her to the lower bunk and rested my head against her stomach, delirious with the way her fingers split my strands and touched my jaw, humming into the top of my head—_wrong fucking head though._

Her boobs moved under my face with the slowing of her breaths, and her thighs parted.

Instead of takin' advantage, I covered her up.

I shoulda relieved Bubba and Rose, let them get some too, but if I was gonna be hard up, I was going to take as many of them as possible down with me.

So I jumped up to the top bunk and worked through my _periodicals_, but the chicks' tits were fake and their hair bleached of life and their lips not right.

In a huff, I settled for makin' paper porn airplanes.

It amused me for ten minutes.

I liked it when the b-52 Bombshell Bomber stuck in Rose's braid.

Lookin' outside to the tumbled ochre and dust dried roadside, I saw an armadillo curled into a ball on the soft verge. Then, along the frontage road alongside the highway, there came a barreling, jacked up, golf cart with a Sheriff's insignia.

Bubba held his arm out the window, "Yeah, fucker!"

I held my hand up to my window, giving him the finger, "Yeah, fucker."

Next thing I knew, Bubba had a pack of XXX Large Trojans in his lap, and he was unrolling the whole lot of 'em.

Outside the window, the air blasted into the rubber, makin' a huge balloon. Quick time, he tied it up and bounced it back inside.

Pretty soon, the floor was littered with condom balloons.

We raced past another sign, "_Fight truth decay. Read your Bible daily."_

Billboards swirled in rapid succession as we hit the outskirts of a small town all full up on itself:

_Gun Control Means Being Able to Hit Your Target: Team DNR_

_Beer, The Only One You Tell Your Secrets To: Schlitz_

_Beer, Because You Never Got a Pony: Anheuser Busch_

_Join the wireless plan. Alltell can't beat God's network. His is unlimited and free. _

Fuck, we were deep in the backwaters now.

Unable to sleep, of course, distracted by my dick, _of course_, I leaped to the floor and sat down, flipping open my Blackberry.

I checked my twitter.

Nothin' new doin' with Palin. Thank Christ.

But what was this?

_Hi Tech Dog Tagging? Track your dog on Twitter._

"_Twitter is goin' to the dogs."_

_Not a bad idea, all in all. Probably be a good way to keep tabs on the Nuclear NOLA Pack… now if I could get them all to wear those shock-collars, I'd be really goddamn happy._

Maybe even set up a chain link fence around the doghouses.

Even better.

Suddenly, Bella bent around me like a willow, her legs and arms folding me back against her.

"What are you smilin' about?" She kissed me ear.

A shiver worked through me, from my balls to my shoulders, and I jerked to my feet, "Nothin'."

She stood and my slight chill lifted her skin in the finest undulations, and then made her nipples stand at attention.

I wiped the smirk off my face and firmly replaced it with my ain't-had-sex-in-too-long-really-want-to-have-sex-here-there-and-everywhere-right-fuckin'-now scowl, lookin' over Bella like the hot, wet, supple, succulent feast I knew her to be.

Her braless boobs shuddered with her breaths, and her lips parted like her legs, needing me to suckle.

Stalking my quarry, I crossed the two feet between us, her heat enveloping me.

She backed as far away as she could, and Em turned up the radio, whispering to Rose to keep her eyes on the road.

"Whoa there, stud," Bella fell back with her back arched and her neck thrown to the side even while she attempted to stave me off.

Her need saturated the air between us, and my cock throbbed in recognition.

I grabbed her ankle, pulling it up.

I scraped the backs of my fingernails under her legs, tickling and fine-tuning her up to her knees, her thighs, hefting her higher as my hips widened her stance, and my hands pressed her open.

Grunting her name, "_Bella,_" I used the same I-just-came voice that usually made her orgasm last through at least one more earthquake-sized climax.

Passionate and unrestrained, we kissed with our tongues twisting, our hands fighting, finding, tearing.

I teased her with the tip of my dick.

Her sweet heat met my divine drops of precum; and still completely clothed we humped against the wall.

She came so loudly I clapped my hand to her mouth and continued to palm her through her cut-offs.

The thick head of my cock scraped against the buttons of my jeans, and just before I came, I reared up, back into her fingers that made figure eights on my spinal cord, plunged into the seat of my pants and over my clenching ass.

Gasping and crazy, still wired, my crotch was a wet wasteland, my erection reforming and ready for more.

"Kennel down now," she commanded quietly.

_What the fuck? I wasn't no mastiff to be thwarted off._

Fuck this rust-on-wheels-house-boat, I wanted to motorboat Bella's tits with my cock; every other fucker was getting' off and so had I, but I wasn't finished yet. I sucked in my bottom lip, gave Bella slow wink, and popped open her fly until I had my fingers nice and deep inside her, and she'd forgotten all about makin' me stop.

Then Alice and Jizz knocked on the door against which I'd sandwiched Bella.

_Fuck._

I tucked my tackle to the left side and turned the door handle, with Bella still plastered to the back of it.

I peeled Bella off the portal and led her to the couch.

She was bright and flushed.

And so pretty it hurt just to look at her.

So I focused on the Head Shrinker instead; true to form, she gave no ground.

"I'm not telling you a damn thing, Eddie," Alice was closed up so tight I'd never be able to jimmy the locks in her head.

I couldn't fuck, I couldn't jack off, I couldn't know what the fuck was goin' on.

But I had an idea. One that had been forming…dangerously, eerily, _horrifyingly_.

"You are _not_ gonna offer her up." My teeth rattled with the dead lowness of my voice.

The grin on Alice's gothic lips dimmed.

"Because I will _kill_ you if anything happens to her," I stared at Jazz, daring him to step in.

Whispering, Alice tried to explain once more, "Irina knows all. Eleazar has a good idea. _Someone in Volterra wants us all to live, wants to use us for their own gain._"

"I can't explain what I see, and you _cannot_ know it, because if you have even the slightest fucking clue about what's going to happen and Aro gets his hands on you-"

"Stalemate," I finished for her.

"No, Eddie. More like the complete and utter annihilation of all of us."

Weighted and sagging, Alice fell to her mate.

"You two are made for each other," she pointed her pointy chin first at me then at Bella.

I watched Bella from the corners of my eyes; she sat forward, all ears.

"And you simply _can't_ exchange knowledge." Alice levered over the table until her washed-out face was too close, "A minefield, a key. A _mind-field._"

Jazz grabbed Alice back, "This shit needs to be parceled out, patrolled and monitored. _Y'all can't strategize together_."

"We're all hedging heavily on Bella's shield."

That was Rose, the supposed voice of reason.

The Almond Joy-_because sometimes she felt like a nut_**—**piped up, "We've got one chance."

I looked to Bella, and she nodded at me.

Quickly, I was against her, feeling her warm, soft body, her high waist and lush hips. I told the rest of them to fuck off as I walked the four feet to the bedroom with her in my arms.

"God, Lucifer, Mary, _Job_," I held her face between my hands, memorizing her dimples, "Can't I just get a quickie?"

"Well, that's quite a messed-up litany," Bella pushed her hands into my hair and gripped lustily. _I was gonna get lucky._ With a wicked flash to her eyes and her budding nipples sexily rubbing against me, she was ready. _Screw this waiting bullshit, I was gonna hit a homerun, I was going to go all the way, we were gonna fu- _

"We're here!" Rose the self-appointed tour director announced.

Cockblocking sons of whores!

_~~ll~~_

_Here_ was a hole in the wall roadside bar on the outskirts of our final destination, Punta Gorda, Florida.

Literally, the shack, which vibrated with noise from the inside and a virulent green color flaking off the wood shingles of the outside, was called the Hole in the Wall.

And that just said it all, far as I was concerned.

Handing Bella down to the ground from the Road _Worrier_, I brought her right up into me as we walked across the gravel lot to the bar, stringing her to my hips and locking my arms around her with a fierce proprietary smile on my face. As soon as we hit the interior, which was filled to the brim with walking talking, _thinkin'_—but not too hard, unless they strain their pea-sized brains—buffets, I planted my feet and laid a long, deep kiss on Bella. She grasped my collar, twisting it so a new tear appeared, and I grunted at her rough response, bucking my hips to hers and grabbing her ass to grind her over me in a thick, erotic dance that had her sweating and shaking and sliding her tongue slowly with mine.

The hard tips of her boobs chiseled away at me until I licked once more across her perfectly swollen mouth, moaning, "_Fuck._"

There were catcalls, whistles, even some clapping from the hellhole's patrons, and Bella narrowed her eyes on me, taking a final opportunity to shimmy up to her tiptoes and rub her body against mine like a goddamn kitten in heat. She purred once more with the cord of my throat rising to her lips, "Next time, why don't you just take a piss on me when you wanna spread your scat."

"We been through this before, darlin'. You know I would if I could," I couldn't deny the thought of marking her with my scent, so everyone everywhere _forever_ would know she was _my woman,_ had its merits_._

Lightly slapping my ass, she went up to the bar.

I followed like a guard dog on a leash.

She'd managed to change into somethin' that roused more toxin to my cock now that I'd let her go enough to get a good look at her.

_She was lookin' good. Too damn good._

Goddamn Whitesnake tanktop was stretched right across her tits, replacing the G n' R one I'd destroyed weeks ago. The winged heart wound with a snake beat with each of her breaths as she hooked her elbows back to the bar. Her cut-offs were made from warshed-out denim, shreds of fringe unraveling and laying like streamers on her upper thighs. _Fuckin' things were too short, and not short enough._ I could probably reach a finger or two up under the hem, finger her hot pussy.

I knew my eyes were hooded and turning to black velvet as I licked my lips, standing sentinel over her, holding up two fingers to the bartender without paying any attention to him whatsoever.

Hard-up, I bent to hiss in her ear, "Yeah, I'm gonna have my white snake in you."

I tugged the soft lobe and licked down her neck.

All the men and a fair few chicks were starin' at her body, full of fantasies of fucking and touching.

Growling, I moved to block her from view with my wide shoulders, but Bella pressed me back, "Stand down, baby."

_Not likely._

Even my dick was on point, streaking against her hip. I drank my beer and sent up another two fingers for bourbon. "You ain't fucked me in… _shit, babe, _it's been almost two weeks, so this," I made sure she could feel the bulb head of my dick rapping on her, "isn't gonna stand down."

Her long, brown lashes fluttered flirtatiously while she took a long pull of her beer and followed it with the shot.

Both my hands on her waist, I positioned her in front of me, her ass nestled to my groin, "Even the broads are lusting after you! Look at 'em."

She was shaking, with laughter, "The women are lusting after you, Eddie."

"Really?" My nose curled up, and I hid my head in the fluffy drapes of her hair, not wanting to look at the chicks' faces or peer into their thoughts again.

Bella tutted me and folded her arms over mine, bringing them up so we pushed her tits up, and I got an excellent view of her cleavage when I lifted my face just enough to watch my fingers going rogue to thimble her nipples. "Sh'yeah," she leaned back against me, "You with your sexy body, your spicy scent, all that suggestive seduction that's just a natural part of you; you don't have to do anything but swagger into a room, or across a parking lot with that smile on your deliciously red lips."

Pivoting to face me, she bound her fingers in my fucked up hair and pulled me down to her, "Yeah, you sexy, gorgeous man. But you're mine."

I nodded and agreed hoarsely, "Goes without sayin'."

She bit my lower lip and held it, marking me.

_Mother fuck me._

I muttered into the bow of her upper lip, "Not helping me stand down, Bella."

She jumped up to a barstool, threaded me between her silky, creamy thighs and sank a shot down. "Wolves here?"

I shrugged, "No."

"Other vampires?" She knocked on the bar and ordered some fries or wings or nachos or shit.

"Not yet."

Her mouth was a blend of beer and bourbon, cold and warm and rich-tasting, mating with mine. Her mouth was sassy as hell, going back to nip the thick strands of muscles on my throat, "Then you got nothing to worry about. And you know I'm only going home with you."

Just seconds before a very supernatural commotion combusted, I struggled away from Bella's warm kisses, "I take that back."

"Huh?"

I watched the holey screen door bang back with the blast of a huge man fillin' the space, "Garrett's here."

"Rose's Garrett?"

Whipping around from across the room, Bubba's glare caught Bella; his muscles all bundled up, his expression holding the type of murderous intent she'd never seen on him before, "Holy _shit._"

I put my palm up to Bubba, and he returned his focus to the nomad, "Yeah, wrong thing to say."

"I think you should wait in the camper," I tried to lead Bella out the door.

She looked at me, the sheer ludicrousness of my suggestion framing her face in mocking disbelief, "Remember what happened the last time you tried to keep me away from somethin'?"

I gulped and relented, keeping myself between her and the unfolding macho rutting staged between Bubba and Garrett.

With Rose between them.

This was like a goddamn complicated game of chess.

With no compunction or forethought for the future of his balls, Bubba lifted Rose out of the way, going toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with the rugged wanderer, "Don't you even touch her."

Garrett guffawed until the rafters shook down with dust and even a couple of empty mousetraps. "You're speaking for the lovely Rose now?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fuckin' fact, I am, _Boy._" I could tell with his emphasis on that particular word, Bubba'd waited a long time to use Garrett's former insult.

All the humor leaked from Garrett's face.

They were like bulls preparing to charge, their nostrils flaring, biceps decked with muscles, necks craning, teeth bared for low, rumbling growls.

Frankly, I was waitin' for one or the other of them to start pawing at the ground, raise his fingers like horns on top of his head, and stampede with an almighty, '_Ole!_'

"Yeah, knock it off, _boys_," Rose pulled on each of their arms until enough space rested between them that she could shuffle in.

Then, to the complete stupefaction of near about everyone in the Hole in the Wall, not the least was Garrett, whose eyes widened and his forehead crumpled with the most fuckin' look of comical confusion I'd ever witnessed, Rose curved her calf around Bubba's waist, threw her pelvis forward, lifted herself up and kissed the fucking daylights out of him.

I don't think an atom bomb coulda wiped the shit-eating grin off Em's face when Rose got through with him, or the total disbelief off Garrett's.

With all the racket, Bella managed to edge around me, and like a lion, Garrett sniffed her out.

"Oh hell, his eyes are red," she scrambled for my hand as the vampire made a beeline for her.

"She smells good," Garrett was lookin' like he'd skipped a few too many meals and I was about to take that faggoty leather thing he tied his hair back with and use it like a piano wire to cut right through his neck.

"Quit it, Gar," Rose bobbed up behind him.

With her chin rising daringly, Bella took a step away from me, her hand on my abdomen asking for me to hold back, "I got this, Rose." She looked like a firecracker, standing there with her hands on hips, sizing Garrett up, "Yeah? Well you smell like you been hitchin' on the road for a good few weeks, _Brother,_ so I'm pretty sure even a three bit whore would smell just as good to you right about now. But thanks for the compliment anyhow," she winked up at the vampire.

Garrett's weathered face split like an open prairie with a grin, and he reached to pat Bella on the back, but I yanked her out of his reach, "Yeah, you don't touch her either."

"Damn, you Cullen crew need to learn to share, whatever happened to those free-loving days, huh?"

Well, that was Jazz's calling card wasn't it? And thus, he appeared like a genie from a magic lamp. Or a bottle of Bud… _or, he and Alice had just been out back, smokin' some of that Magic Bud._

Scary Mary Quite Contrary hissed at the implications of being shared, and I'da liked to take Garrett up on that offer, "_Take her, take her!"_

Alice turned her death-wielding, unblinking glower on me.

Bella and I set up the pool table while the others brought Garrett up to speed, which didn't take a whole helluva lot of time, considerin' we didn't really know a goddamned thing.

His shaggy head was turnin' left and right, taking it all in with wise agreements and concerned interruptions. When all was said and done, he came over with a pool stick in his hand and clapped me on the shoulder, "You let me know when it's time, I'd be happy to help you all kick some Volturi ass," he shot a quicksilver look at Bella, "in the name of love."

"Thanks, man," I didn't take his offer lightly, the pilgrim had been around since the Revolutionary War so I figured he knew a thing or two about keepin' alive.

After the first game, during which me and Bella racked the balls clean in, a pair of males shuffled up in ragged, dusty clothes with just about a full set of teeth between them.

_Suppose that was somethin' to be proud of._

How the fuck I'd become the spokesperson of our own ragtag group was beyond me, but the duo stood in front of me and asked, "Mind if we-"

"Join ya'," the shorter, paunchier of the two tagged onto the other's question only to have it all finished up by the string bean lookin' man, "For a game?"

I felt like I was in the goddamn _Twilight Zone_, or maybe _Deliverance._

In their greasy hands-their nails embedded with dirt, their fingers cratered by cracks of skin like they spent most their days bent over in the fields and repairing threshers and tractors and combine harvesters—they held onto their pool cues.

"Sure, why not," I opened the table to them.

String Bean held out his hand, "I'm JR." Fuckin' shades of The Jack Rabbit, now replaced by the _Wee Vibe—wee was right, because that dual action piece of plastic crap had nothin' on my dangerous pure vampire cock_—worked over my head._ I wondered if Bella was wearin' it right now, better be my own temptin' brand of titillation making her all glossy-eyed like that._

My ill-timed musings were cut short with JR's other intro, "And this is my brother, RJ."

"You've got to be shittin' me." I hadn't meant to say that out loud. But... _Jesus._

Bubba hulked between the pair and wound his beefy arm back to bring up Jizz between them all, squeezing him in a headlock, "Well goddamn, we got us a hat trick! This here's Junior."

"Well, if it ain't Larry, Curly, and Ho-Mo," Bella jiggled with laughter, _and her tits_, from the other side of the green felt.

I was clutchin' my sides laughing when she winked at Jazz, "No offense, of course."

"None taken," he showed not an ounce of anger _or_ effort as he snuck out of Bubba's chokehold and had him pressed to the back wall beneath a murky Miller High Life globe of light with a pool stick cuttin' off his windpipe.

Bubba flailed like a gutted fish.

JR/RJ were mightily impressed.

Slipping her hand into my back pocket, Bella admonished me quickly before the idea could even get a toehold, "Don't hurt the humans, lover."

"Why not?" I was all back to rights and fights, and they looked good for a couple friendly rounds.

"Unfair advantage, and you're just spoilin' for a brawl."

_Or a fuck._

"I got an itch you ain't scratching," I leaned back to adjust myself then put the shiny black ball in my sights.

She leaned forward with my profile in her vision to lock her wonderful lips around the corner of my jaw, "Just have to see what we can do about that later."

Needless to say, I fuckin' lost _that_ game.

Distracting, infuriating, incredibly sexy woman.

JR/RJ, the scarecrow brothers, could hold their own, that was for sure-both on the pool table and at the bar-but there just weren't any way around good ol' vampire acumen and intoxication.

Bella ate some rank-smelling shit.

The brothers joined us in a booth.

Jizz went to work his magic on the jukebox, with filched quarters from the gumball machines outside provided by Alice.

Intentionally enveloping me in some hazy, dreamy vibe, Jizz gained my attention as a new song began, giving me the international 'Rock On' sign, his thumb, pointer and pinkie fingers raised.

Well, it sounded low and southern and sultry and gritty.

It put me in mind of fucking.

Exiting the booth, I held my hand out to Bella, "Care to dance?"

Bella smiled first at RJ/JR, with their interchangeable names and sudden silly blushes, before accepting my palm at her waist, "Why, yes, I would."

I made room for us in this broom closet bar and then had all I could to keep my hands on Bella's waist, sometimes one on her tit too, keep my mouth from dropping open and my dick from incising through my jeans, as she started out riding up and down my thigh to sexual tune of _Mississippi._

The way she undulated wasn't in any way, to be completely cunting honest, human.

All long lean legs and winding ivory arms, all twisting hips and rhythmic thrusts, her head rolling that thick, lustrous curtain of hair, Bella had me in her spell like snake charmer.

_I`m big and proud all over _

_Not just on the stage _

_My secret self has many sides _

_That laugh and crush and sting _

_I`m red and thick like fire _

_I like it from behind _

_Round and Round and _

_Red to white _

_I`m pure and sad and silent_

Jesus, yeah. _Missus Sip Me!_

Her white tanktop was stretched and getting moist from her perspiration in the weakly air-conditioned place.

Another roll of her hips to mine, a turn and tuck and bend of her knees, and I held onto her ass for all I was worth, wondering wildly about the possibility of Bella in a wet t-shirt contest.

_Fuck no, _all these guys and girls would love that.

Later, yeah later.

_In private._

I snapped her frail straps gently to her skin. I could almost see her nipples; there was no need for a wet tee. Bundling my thumbs over them, I pinched, and she lowered again, her hair a cloud down my chest and stomach, her breath heating up my crotch, her look erotic and mesmeric and magnificent.

_I know I`ve got a piece of my heart _

_On the sole of your shoe _

_I`ve got a little bit of thunder _

_Trapped inside of a cloud _

_The dog in you _

_Spit me out into the Mississippi _

As she moved over me, I tried to make out the flimsiest material cupping her breasts, and she caught me, "What are you doing?"

"Watching you, wanting you," I parted her legs with my thigh and drew her calf up and over me. I moved her tresses aside and melted my tongue to the sensitive skin under her ear, "Wonderin' what you're wearing under this wet dream of a top."

Brazenly arching back, Bella laughed in moist, smoky tones, "You just need to ask." And with the same kind of complicated voodoo girl move that she'd already rehearsed earlier in the day, she had the thing unhooked, down her round shoulders and out from under the Whitesnake tank in no time flat.

Hanging off her index finger as she whirled around me was the scantiest scrap of pearl gray lace.

Swiping it, the kinky concoction was still hot from her body and formed with the shape of her breasts. I looked it all over, contemplating rubbing it on my crotch or shoving it down my pants. Bein' a gentleman, of sorts, I settled for folding it into my pocket, right next to my painfully engorged cock.

_Who can love my many selves _

_The wife, the bitch, the Rapunzel _

_The one who cries _

_And calls for you _

_The one who is always alone_

Braless Bella in a bar.

If I thought we were the center of attention before, I was dead wrong.

My hips bucked and my legs were weak when the song ended to Bella slyly, sordidly smiling at me… just before she flashed me.

_~~ll~~_

We took up residence in the Redneck Yacht Club-_Florida's largest mudding track with trails and camping—_otherwise known as 'Bubba's Wet Dream' like… _well, like we owned the place._

Which I 'spose was a very real possibility because I never really kept track of our vast holdings anymore.

Punta Gorda, Florida, the Peace River, hicks and bog runnin'. I might-could get used to this dirty, countryfolk kingdom.

That night, Bella needed to get some sleep and I needed to… _well, whatever._

But first, I cornered the Little Bleeder, "How long we here for?"

"Why? You want to buy shares?" she skewered me, the Screw-Loose Little'un.

"Think I already have some," I thought back again but just couldn't place it.

Grinning at me, Little Bo Peep Lost Her Sleep circled her fingers against her temples making pretend she was in a trance, monotoning, "It appears decided. We go home after tomorrow."

Emmett the Rotter and His Jug Band, configured of Jazz on harmonica, Alice with a tambourine, Rose on the washboard; a Partridge Family pastiche… of paranormal beings, set up outside around a campfire.

A-fucken-men.

Bella was on the bottom bunk and I decided to give her a few minutes respite, seein' as how she was already snoozing. So I reclined up top even though I couldn't sleep, because I was totally fucking whipped, and I knew it.

Fifteen minutes was too long, and all I could hear was her soft breathing and the jingle jangle band outside.

Silently landing on the floor next to Bella, I shucked off my jeans. I'd forgotten to pack my briefs so there wasn't much else to take off.

Balling up my flannel shirt, the one that was threadbare and whose sleeves I'd ripped off a couple weeks ago when the Joo-ly sun had come on in its one hundred degree heat, I lunged over Bella's supine body. From behind, I pulled her against me.

Her heat packed me in. The long hook of my cock met the nook of her ass and curved between her pussy lips up to her clit.

I was pretty excited to find her completely naked_._

She turned and sleepily smacked her lips to mine, "Huh?"

"It's later," I dripped my mouth down to her tits and took one between my teeth.

With sleep dusting her abyssal eyes, Bella yawned and smoothed her hand down my flank, "We're just gonna mess around, you know?"

"Huh?" Confusion contorted me, and then comprehension flagellated me, "As in, _no fucking?_ Still?_"_

Time was accelerating… and yet she'd decided we had to wait to have sex again. If I thought vampirism was the ultimate curse, I was wrong. And there may have been an unknown threat breathing down our necks, but shit, sex was uppermost in my mind.

"Okay," I gave in, when she withheld her hands until I couldn't take it any longer.

Damn glad I did, too, because the next hour and some was spent simply making out, hungry kisses warped to teasing licks and testing breaths. Our slick, sticky bodies came together and apart over and over.

She'd grab my hair and dive into my mouth and then lay off, making me come after her.

I'd grab and pinch and squeeze and feel her up, and up inside, then paint my fingers languorously down her legs and up her hips and over her tits.

Panting and wanton, wet and naked, we twisted until the bedclothes were like chains lashing us together with each churned breath.

"Now let's see what we can do about your little problem," Bella stoked my thighs and nimbly snuck against my 'nads.

_Little?_

I quirked an eyebrow.

"Okay," she giggled, "Big problem; big, rigid, ready, sexy problem. Now bring it up here."

_Fuck what?_

"My mouth," she tapped her candied open lips.

_Okay, _I sucked through my teeth and laid my dick against her mouth.

_Loving Hell._

Her tongue twirled like a roughened ring around the ridge of my dick, and her lips pursed against my strappy veins.

I kneeled over her and braced to the wall, she dove under and sucked at one of my balls then the other, making them wet and heavy, letting them hang between her spread fingers.

Then her devious fingers tickled up my ass, and her touch was a hot, fired iron as she swept against my niche.

"Bella!" My cock rampaged in her mouth.

She sucked all of me.

Straddling her face, I tried to stay on top of my reactions. With her mouth smoldering over the veins in my dick. With her lips opened over me. With her tongue teasing my flared head to gather up the opalescent drops in the slit of my cock.

I cranked her head aside by her hair, then with a mighty roar, I pulled out of her, scared that I'd hurt her. Gasping, I bent to Bella's neck and her tits and her waist, apologizing and rubbing my aching boner against her legs, "You don't have to do this."

Her honey voice was like molasses over me, "I want you to fuck my mouth, Eddie."

_Now that was an order I'd take. _

I had to hold my base and pull up on my balls as I nudged back inside.

But Bella opened her mouth, closed her eyes, wrapped her plump pout over me, coating me with her saliva.

Dirty rotten and mine, she mimicked every move I made until I reached back to ensure she was just as turned on as me. Three fingers holding her apart, her swollen labia like petals opening to my caress, her satin hold clasped around my grip.

My wrist turned and her lips yearned.

And I kept lowering my dick into her and lifting myself out. Faster, _faster. _I jerked forward and wrestled with her hair in one hand and kneaded my fist up into the wall with the other.

Panting and crazed, I held onto her throat as my cock slid deep inside her, and I fuckin' bellowed, "_Oh my fucking FUCK, Bella!"_

And I came so fucking hard, I streamed down her throat then out onto her breasts and over stomach, watching my cum drip down to the well of her below her pretty mound.

"_Oh," _I breathed raggedly, _"shit…"_

"Feel better, Baby?"

"_Uhhhhyeah," _I crashed to the mattress, bringing Bella with me.

In the morning, I felt like I'd had shut-eye.

I couldn't remember my waking hours after Bella's blowjob.

We geared up and went to the race track, checking out our rented four wheelers.

"The Grouper Hole or the Gator Slough?" We were fucking spoilt for choice.

"I don't know, Hog Waller looks like a good time," Bubba decided.

I gave in when Bella wanted her own ATV.

She throttled off over the hilly escarpment, and I took her flank.

Everything about her was flying so high, we could only crash and burn.

But I brushed that shit off and concentrated on the patterned dirt we consecrated.

_Created._

Taking off her visor, her bright eyes galloped with living, with feeling.

"I want a dog," she stated.

_A dog?_

"A _hotdog_, babe."

A cruising-for-a-bruising type passed us on a welded-together mess made of sky-high monster tires bearing a flat platform taken off an airboat. His Harley shirt read: _If you can read this, bitch fell off._

We spent the day laughing and loving; hittin' every 'Hole' and then checkin' out the dirt trails before gathering in the early evening to take advantage of the Buggy/ATV wash where we drove through the wide gaps of the rough two-by-fours. At the side of a shack, Bella hopped under an outdoor shower, backing up to the siding. All sudsed up and soapy from the top of her tits to the bottom of her soles, my dream of Bella in a wet 'T' came true as her tits showed suggestively through the old gray and mud splotched shirt that stuck to her figure.

I offered to wash her pussy, and after lookin' around to ensure we were alone, she lifted her dirty foot to my shoulder as I found my knees and pulled her cut-offs down far enough I could make good fast work of her clit with my tongue and her fine, satiny lips with my fingers.

I figured it was the least I could do after the way she'd blown my head off the night before.

The night would be capped off at the Charlotte County Convention Center.

Out in the parking lot we stopped in the back corner where tailgaters were barbecuing and liquoring up, just like at a football game.

There was a salty-lookin' old man with a blaring red nose only surpassed by his gritty low register spilling out words in such a thick GeeChee accent I couldn't make heads or tails.

_Heads and tails_. He was surrounded by a pack of South Carolinian-bred, barking Boykin spaniels – _'Boinkin' spaniels'_, Rose sparked from behind—they deafened me with their whines as they tried to get at me, all useless snarls and incisors that would be nothin' more than blunt butter knives against my flesh.

What the fuck was with the canine population these days, had they no sense of self-preservation?

"Hey, Sonny," the old man looked right at me, "Wanna rib?"

_Er, well hell. How to answer that? Were there pumping arteries attached?_

"Thanks, no," I shuttled Bella along the tarmac to the dome that already roared inside with itinerants and hicks and every dick and his chick.

Bubba's first stop was the concessions, where he bought himself a giant sky blue foam hand, "Number One, man!" he jeered in my face.

There was a woman stood next to us at the 'Will Call' window, snapping her chewing gum and checking her teased to high-heaven and bleached to holy-hell hair, wearin' tight jeans with seams up the back that sat on her blousy hip with her muffin' top overflowing the waistband. Impatiently, she rapped on the counter, "What you doin' back there, boy?" Huffing up her hairsprayed bangs that didn't so much as move, she elbowed Bella, "I cain't believe I paid a _convenience_ charge for this sort of _disservice._" She slapped a cap against her thigh and stomped her snakeskin boots. Hunkering down to look at her reflection in the perspex window, the woman delicately saddled a camouflage ball cap to her nest of hair. She peaked the bill, proudly nodding to her image at the 'Charlotte Racing' logo grinning back at her.

We ran into the rusty crop dusters JR/RJ. It was goddamn comical the way those two tried to bump fists with Bubba as they were all sporting their spongy pointer finger hands.

Inside the bubble that'd been done out to a larger-than-life maze of boggy tracks, muddy byways, and precipitous jumps, the crowd's thoughts hit me like sailor's knots… slapping me everywhichway.

Strobe lights 'bout gave me a seizure, and the rowdy roustabouts found their feet like one human vessel, all linked to the booming male voice over the speakers, "Let's Get Ready to _Make This Monster Nation!"_

Whistles and yells and the stamping of thousands of feet made the entire place shake and shimmy while the lights lowered to ghostly glow in dark neons and the first road warriors belted from the pits.

Pistons pumped and every bone in my body throbbed with the agitation swilling around me.

"Hot diggery!" the broad beside me stood on her seat and threw popcorn all over the place.

There were camo caps with checkered flags on them. Cowboy hats dotted here and there. Rawhide clothes in nature's colors as if all these people had come out of the woods for this country convention. John Deere sweatshirts. And a hella lot of missin' teeth.

The freestyle dirt bikers were first with their screaming choppers. "_Well, ain't they cute as pie," _exclaimed the young mother sat in front of us with her tiny baby to her teat.

Squaring off to Bella, I made damn sure she wasn't paying too much particular attention to any one of the moronic motorcyclists.

Bubba was aping around, head butting every male within his reach—he only knocked one unconscious and then quickly saw to setting him to rights with an icepack from his back pocket.

Rose rolled her eyes and stroked her man's back.

Sinking back in his seat, Jizz spliffed up, alternating between a toke and a grope of The Ragamuffin Rastafarian. She was all ratted up in the head, continually glancing to the top of the stands, watchin' the aisles, losing her grip.

When I turned back to the track, that dirtbike dickhead was makin' eyes at my girl.

I hurled myself down over the chairs and like the Red Sea to Moses, the populace parted, until Bella lassoed me around my neck and called me back, "Baby, hot as it is sometimes when you get insanely jealous, I think you'd blow your cover if you marched down there and started throwing monster trucks around."

The showman waved at her, and she gave him nothing more than the side of her face. I scowled heavily.

The yokel on the Yamaha with his Mellow Yellow team shirt tried harder, backflipping his bike and never losing Bella from his sights.

_Show off._

Fuckin' shit head.

I'd goddamn kill him if he even so much as approached Bella.

Wheelies screamed and trucks went ass-over-end only to be put back on their tires by marshalling front-end loaders. The entire troupe of big boys' toys radiated the track and spewed mud up into the stands over and over again.

The showmen lifted their tinted visors and waved and made their motors screech at the throng.

And the crowd went wild, about every one and a half minutes.

My head was splitting in two with all these people, but then Bella took me down to our seats and sat on my knee, rubbed my temples and scrubbed my sideburns and hummed against me.

_Better._

Until she hung back and hooked me with a spurious look, "Hang on, is this part of your wooing strategy?"

Faintly insulted she thought I was incapable of romance, "Uh no," I scratched my head, perplexed.

"Just screwing with you," she tittered and tilted to me again.

_No, you're not, _my dick helpfully supplied with a twitch from _it_ and a groan from me.

Impishly takin' in my pained appearance, Bella smirked, "_Oooh_, sorry. I mean, just _messing_ with your _head_."

_Yead, definitely messin' with my head_.

The night was an endless road-ripping rodeo.

Of autographs and dashed and destroyed vehicles, of trucks careening, keening and killing throttle.

Crushed cars and accordioned hoods and jeers, cheers, shouts and the cheapest beer in plastic cups.

_And Alice, watching._

Jittery and waxen like the moon, the witch was way too worked up.

Frisbees and t-shirts and stuffed toys were thrown up to us in the bleachers.

I caught something, and made quick origami of it.

_Fuck if Bella was gittin' an autographed photo of one of those cunts._

Bella had to go the restroom, and it took all my willpower not to follow her.

Rose made off up the aisle soon after.

Over the stands, Mary Malice looked again.

Leaning my elbows to my knees, my hands hung between my thighs, my breaths jangled in my chest.

Every second Bella was gone had me cranked up another notch.

Even the flame throwing _Tyrannosaurus Tractor_ failed to capture my attention.

Because I was focused, and I was on my feet immediately when I saw her.

A typhoon of denim, Bella ran down the steps and shook like a livewire above Alice, "You didn't warn me!" Bella blasted, and Alice shied away.

"I couldn't." Her head was in her hands and her amber eyes weighted by tears that would never spill, "You and Eddie couldn't know… _we've got to keep these secrets, we've got to safeguard Eddie..._"

Bella wouldn't be restrained, she was trembling with spite and fight as she lit out of me to hear The Untrustworthy Undercover Agent's final note, "…if this is going to work."

Instantly, I smelled _her_ death. From a distance closing in.

The crowded auditorium faded**. **

_This was so not what I needed._

Bella must have run into her in the bathrooms.

That would be just her sneaky, creeping style.

_Chelsea._

Nettles, sharp, cutting and jaded and decayed, her aroma became stronger, more grotesque with my freezing-cold remembrance of what she was capable of.

A tall and threatening female, she dissolved and reappeared before us.

"We had an agreement," I shoved Bella behind me, my body only a physical barrier to her power.

Her London Fog Sloane Ranger accent was frigid, "All bets are off now."

My body formed to fight her, but she just looked inside me, finding that tight, winding hemp of love connecting me to Bella. Silently, she threatened to set it afire so all the yarns burned up and unraveled.

_Hands off._

Her adder black thoughts were brutal.

I spun like a convicted man from the hangman's gallows.

Her barbs tightened around my brain, squeezing me out of myself, "Don't," I strained. "Not yet," I rasped.

Undaunted, Bella commanded, "Stop!"

As if she was unable to defy Bella's order, Chelsea reeled and ceased her snip-snip-snipping apart of my emotional threads.

_What the hell was that?_

Chelsea ran her eyes over each of us, silently increasing the distance between Rose, Bubba, Jizz and Alice who stood together, and me, Bella and herself in the center of their circle.

The auditorium had emptied around us, leaving a shocklingly huge chamber that echoed with nothing but hard breaths and despair.

Civilized, Chelsea asked for Bella's hands, leaving me be.

She clasped them calmly, turning them over in inspection as Bella sneered and railed her head back.

"I'm so sorry you're his singer," Chelsea freed Bella then to simper over her clothes, picking at lint and fuzz, all the while watching Bella's reaction.

_Testing her._

Bella stood so tall and strong and brave, like a warrior woman, "I'm not."

"No one's ever touched him like you do," Chelsea looked as though she were trying to understand a new species of animal, the way her neck quirked aside. A green aurora of light collided between them, burning up oxygen, fueled by jealousy.

"You tried." Bella was furious, stunning, and angry.

"You took his meaning, his _life_, his _family_ from him," she swiveled, "And still, you've never had Eddie like I do."

I wanted to break away and protect Bella, but there would be no fight against Chelsea's onslaught if she decided to cut us apart again. I was totally fuckin' shackled by her presence.

"Human, you have a point," Chelsea's devious lips turned from lethal to legion.

Her attention shifted from Bella to me, "_Eddie_ now, is it?"

"Yeah, you fucking whore," my voice slashed her where my fists would be futile, "Now get the hell away from Bella."

At my insult, Alice sucked in a gasp, and Chelsea's head spun toward the Malignant Little Minstrel.

They exchanged a look.

_They exchanged a fucking goddamn look._

_There had never been a threat in Cainwhore._

This was all just a set-up.

Alice had known Chelsea would be here after Bella; the Volturi's own henchwoman.

"Jesus Christ!" I boomed.

* * *

~How'd that hit you? Y'all's reviews are _golden_ and I'm a greedy woman~

The song in the Hole in the Wall bar was _Mississippi_ by Paula Cole.

Redneck Yacht Club:

www(DOT)redneckyachtclubfl(DOT)com/mud_driving(DOT)php

Check the **blog **for teasers (if you subscribe, you get your teaser in full living cover straight from Eddie to your inbox!) and other assorted fucking awesome DC poems, vids and stuff—I'll be posting my Dead Confederate Halloween outtake there on the 31st:

deadconfeds(DOT)wordpress(DOT)com/

^Link is also on my profile^

I posted a southern slash story, **_Misguided Angel_**. Have a look if it interests you…it is going to be super short, it's incredibly sexy ;).

My other full length fic, **_Youth without Age and Life without Death_**, is coming to a close shortly. I'm quite excited…it's been a brilliant, supernatural, sensual and mysterious ride! So, I'll either be focusing solely on Eddie and my real writing (closer updates, yay!), or finishing off _Jealousy_ and _Carnal Knowledge 101. _I haven't decided yet (nevertheless, those two will have more chapters).

Final bit: Eddie and I don't really have time to tweet anymore. If you're looking for us, you can find us mainly (often) on **Facebook**; both our links are on my profile.

Cheers, Rie~


	27. OUTTAKE Luxury Hollows All Hallow's Eve

Many thanks to BoT for hosting this knees-up and inviting me to take part, and to my stunning betas! Vanessarae was all 'Too Much!' and Viola Cornuta was all, 'MORE MORE!'. Between them, I think I got my shit together. I love them both so very much.

**This bit of fucking around has has absolutely no bearing on the overall story, _Dead Confederates. _ Just some Halloween hijinks for y'all.**

Thanks to Gayle King, Gasaway Alley, and QuantumFizzx for the church work and t-shirts!

There is a Dead Confederates Halloween *spooky* playlist made mostly by Eddie's delicious ladies on Facebook:

www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/my_playlists?p=0C463ED8529D2777

**Disclaimer**: Don't own a damn thing ;). Not even a laptop anymore :(.

**Song: **_Bloodlust, _Nosferatu

www . youtube . com/watch?v=Rqgg9su9DxA

* * *

**Luxury Hollows All Hallows Eve**

"_**Practice makes perfect, so be careful what you practice."**_

"Head down."

"Okay, baby, can I just grab a pencil to keep my hair out of my face?"

"_Shhhh._ You ain't allowed to talk."

Wide, thick-fringed, charcoal-brown eyes blinked. _But she didn't speak._

"On your knees, spread your legs… _wider._ That's right, darlin'."

She swallowed noisily and gusted up a blast of sweet-tea-scented air towards her bangs, and I fuckin' wanted to bang her into docility… _just once. If she'd let me. _Wait_. Let me?_ Hell cunt-ass no. She _would_ let me; she was _mine. _Tonight. Hallowed Fuckin' Ween.

For once, I was gonna wean her from her rebellious spirit. No talkin', no back-talkin', no sassin' back.

_Even though… that's what I loved about her._

I hid a smirk at her sneer that tried to form into the complacent smile we'd discussed. She snorted in disgust and masked her disgruntlement with the cheroot-dipped, Virginia tobacco-colored tresses I hadn't allowed her to bun-up.

_Asshole._

She didn't friggin' actually have to say anything, and I didn't need to read her mind—which was a good thing, because I fuckin' couldn't anyoldhow. I still heard her, always would.

But we'd agreed.

_Tonight. Mine. Obsequiously, subserviently._

I clicked my tongue against my teeth and watched razor blades of goose bumps stickle up and down her at just that noise as I stood above, seemingly aloof, and she below, stunningly bowed.

_She owned me._

I closed my eyes and I opened the fly of my black leathers—_though maybe I shoulda gotten her to do that?—_and demanded, devilishly, "Suck my cock." She scrunched up her face in a very _unsubmissive_ manner, the likes of which I'd never seen when I had my dick out, when she was usually _pleading_ with me to push her, pull her, have her, _love her._

_Lover._

Fuck that fe-mo bullshit, on this All Hallows Eve, she would be my dominion.

We'd decided.

Kissing her shoulder, bypassing her leaping tits, pressing my fingers slowly, gently, poetically to her warm-wet lower lips, I professed, "You like bein' told what to do, don't you, you little slu-"

Spluttering around a mouthful-and-then-some of my cock, Bella all but shouted—_would have, if my dick hadn't been parting her pretty pouty-outie lips… and I didn't really think shoutin' was in order anyway—_"Did-_garble-_you -_gargle-_justcallmea-_release-_slut?"

I raised my hands as my cock rallied, all slick and swollen and ready and reddish-I-guessed, and defended, in between the beat of the big man down below and the deciduously decided noirishness of my eyes blackening to bits and pits and pitch and lust, "It's called 'role playin', remember?"

I sucked my hand up and down my _member_ slurpy with _her_ saliva and watched as her color heightened and her legs opened and her nipples- those pearly-colorful-puffy-nickels-knocked as she knelt low. She licked a straight and striating and strengthening line that started with lips closed, then open, then opining, then teeth bared and then slicing and duckin' under my thighs after she'd bitten all over me—scatter-nibbles that felt through every erogeny of me… _homogenous… egregious—_my balls sat low until she crawled and feasted and growled and pulled with mouth and lips and teeth and tongue until a dead-bootleg moan made out of me, and my left leg rattled like I had a prosthetic limb I couldn't control and she hummed and hustled and… _and_… and wasn't she supposed to be the compliant one here?

The missile of my cock drowned and clanged and velveteened and was a lazy-cold-thought over her face from above.

_Above._

Below, my lover hovered.

I spat and sank back and lifted her up and sanded her arms behind her ass and her wrists wound together like a braid and her head lowered and her mouth mentioned, "Whatever. I ain't no slut." The jet-blue-green-brown blow of her psychedelic wish-wash hair wavered. She mumbled and tasted her lips and smiled at my flavor there and looked first at my four—_maybe five or six-_ fistfuls of dick then to my stomach and up over my jutting chest to my shoulders four times wider than her and to my lips craven red and my lustful eyes, "If anyone's a slut, it's you, former man-whore of dead and alive both."

An arm to the splintery timber so wood broke, a dip at my knees so my boner-bright-burnished hovered like the eye of a tornado. and I lowered more and I was at her height and I was at her beg, beck and call.

"I'm gonna have to tie you up."

The expression on her face strove inward in a precise escapade of the unspoken, _"Why am I not surprised."_

I fumbled for a nano-not-instant—_she would never, should never be broken, but I just wanted to do this… Bella-bound, fuck yeah._

I curved my rampart lips and saturated a laugh into the whelk edge of her bare breast.

She winged her fingers like butterflies and moths and bees and swarming to my hair for a second, _not even_, before her breathy honey-dusk-dewdrop voice smiled, "Do it, babe."

_Too much vocalization. _"Quiet, woman."

She ingested my words and strove her breasts up and her ass back and challenged me before breaking her sight down, down, down to the plankboard floor.

One cushion from the porch couch under her legs.

_I was all fuckin' into this. _I'd even outfitted the back-twenty shed with mood lighting and shit. Because if'n I could get Bella to bend to my will like a branch of oleander for just one night, I was gonna do it right.

The hasp-cords of twine lassoed to rusty nails had been replaced with black as black as night as dark as dirty, thick, silken strands strangling to get around her cream-rose-curves and white-gold-tanned-freckled flesh.

_Fickle woman._

I looped rolls of velvety vines around my forearm and then twined them about her. A knot just there at her clit and a rainbow circle structured over her tits.

Because I'd read all up on this rope play fuckery… in about one hour. Knots and naughtiness and _taboo._

When she was pinned like a magnificent moth-bird-gazelle and every critically erotic nerve of her slating, sloughing off body was penned-not penned, _never penned, never known _—I blew up against her with the dash of my exhale-inhale and tugged so hard on the ropes her hands fought to fly up… _but they couldn't._

I sat before Bella and looked over my handiwork.

She ramped against the tightness incarcerating her.

_No matter what we'd discussed, she'd never EVER be submissive._

Every move made a little knot nestle deeper and harder to her hot clitoris. Every jostle spread her dale-glade-delta lips down low, downy soft and so-so wet to my vision.

Each grunt-moan-simper caused a huge reaction to thick-thug-tug up my cock until I was standing off to her side, pulled to erection… _by my formidable erection. _

The… _what was that human-nourishment-sugary-shit?_ Ah, yes. The Jell-o globes of her ass domed with the very light smacks I rendered with the very softest flat of my hand, each time my fingers running low and deep and down and downy and dusky and fitting right to her pussy.

"Okay?"

She acquiesced and breathed tiny-huge draughts of air, the flare of her arousal both an earthen, flowery aroma and a visual assault to my senses. All tied up, flushed and heated, nipples silk-hard dots, a small drip of excitement running down her thigh.

_A total fuckin' aphrodisiac._

"Where were we?"

A dense shudder bent Bella forward, and I brought her back against my chest, the scrape-rasp-buckle of cable against silly-putty-soft skin to my Arctic dick and deviousness, "Oh yeah," I breathed into her nautilus ear and tagged her rum nipples until she bowed out before me and still held her tongue. "I'm gonna fuck you so hard you won't be able to walk."

Opening her mouth, Bella argued, not timidly, "But how will I get to the party?"

Curling my forearms with all the weedy-tension inside, I made her lips part to mine, at the corners, covering slick-damp-dammed-dastardliness upon her, "You can't even cum until I tell you to."

A sigh-sip and Bella crested over my rubbing-nibblin'-nudging fingertips outside her pussy, "Awesome, babe."

Smacking her with just the tip-top of my cold cock, I grumbled, "Bella, uh… I don't think a sub would say 'awesome'."

Cunning cords denoted her body into halves and quarters and fourths and fifths, and I fisted her hair; that's why I'd kept it loose-long-lavender-strikes.

"Oh!" her neck performed artistry, and her back stippled down like muggy summer rain only to arch and trapeze, tease me with her ass and cunt and the hug-hug-hug of her splendid spell-pussy-lips-clit-tease-wet-trap-key.

"Right, Sir-baby… Eddie, _Master._"

I chuckled and lifted her to the scrappy, gouged, wooden table, a long, black-soft cloth draped over it. I pulled her ass right to the edge and grinned with her gasp, her arms trapped behind her, the rope slack enough she could brace back, bow back, and arc up in candlelight whispers.

Legs opened like a creamy, heavy, linen envelope revealing the soft petals of her cunt, and I swirled my initials against her clit, capturing her shiver-quake with my palm right above her mound.

Stepping back, I stamped to gain her attention, "Eyes here, Bella." She watched my lips part and breathe low, rocky words. She jetted up to my eyes and then down to stare at my long fingers, thick wrists open my leathers wider, showing her all my dick.

I bundled her ankles to the tabletop and watched shadow puppets of my fingers flicking-pinching her nipples, the brawn silhouette of my cock hovering and seatin' and slidin' all against her pussy and right down to her ass and right up to her clit.

She bit and bit and moaned and spit and hissed, and I smiled as she tried so fuckin' hard not to talk-demand-yell-cream-scream.

A solid four inches… not nearly in, gash and slash and take and mash.

Hot spoiled tightness took me, and sucked me and fucked me in.

_Shhhhh._

She glared at me and then rocked her head back and wanted all of me inside all of her.

I yanked the silk braid radiating from a knot around her belly button. Bringin' Bella to me, blissfully horny, annoyed, and so goddamn warm-moist-dripping over me.

I thrust all the way inside, crying out and beating the wall and the now-shaky ledge she was offered up on, "_Oh Fuckin' Hell!"_

Light rashes dotted Bella's body, and I raised my hand to her lips and added more force to my next full fuckin' entry into her.

I looked low to my dick deviling out of her, huge-wild-weight all over rained with her drip drops.

I ran my palm over my shaft, feeling the pounding ounces of cum inside and her cum outside.

She nipped my fingertips and flittered to my wrist, and I watched her do what I wanted to do to her, _bite her skin._

Then I noticed my old gold watch.

I heard its Timex tick-tock.

I looked over the door to the timepiece in the shape of South Carolina, slightly mutilated, and I yanked out of her grasping cunt and hashed, "Shit, we're gonna be late to the party."

Oh, yeah. Bella found her throaty sexy voice then, "What the hell?"

I kissed her inside out and held her too tight and tackled with my cock not to get back to ridin' her all open wide and under.

She clambered closer as I pulled away, zip-snapping-tuckin' my cock back into my black leather skins, "Punctuality over pussy? Since when?"

Half-crazed with the torment-almost-orgasm, Bella glowered and licked her lips and made me eye her pretty slit again.

"Mama said I could carve the pig!" I waggled my fingers… fuck yeah, Bubba was gonna be envious.

She mumbled and squirreled around in her captivity, "_Why you pigheaded son-of-a-"_

I cut her off, "Bella," all stern on the outside and all laughin' on the inside and _she was so gonna kick my ass in the mornin'._

"Son-of-a-bitch-Sir." She finished. Then her dawn eyes opened wide, "Wait! You're not gonna leave me all trussed up like this, are ya'?"

"Hell no, I'm gonna take you with me, all trussed up."

"_**God always answers his knee-mail"**_

We'd gotten the orange-black-white-_something_ two weeks ago. Delivered via the US Postal system, straight to the corroded-hangin' off-been-warned-by-the-Property-Owner's-Association-mailbox.

Flickin' through bills, bills, surveys—_what the hell, as if I was gonna answer the Census!—_and coupon booklets for half-off haircuts at Great Cuts and 'Kids Eat for Free' at Moe's, it'd caught my attention.

I'd ripped the envelope with its untacky-tacky waxy-whatever stamp with a South Carolina pineapple on one half and a Spanish moss covered grave marker on the other.

_Bats, cauldron, orange glow-glitter and confetti?_

The shit inside had looked scrawled from the long, lanky penmanship of Mama Brown's boy Caleb, barely friggin' legible:

_**All Hallows Eve**_

_**Mama Brown's BBQ**_

_**Better'n Downtowns**_

_**Fancy Dress Required**_

_**RSVP not necessary**_

Just then, the Senile Sylph, aka Alice, had scarpered to the single wide's mailbox.

Her night-howl eyes had reached mine.

She'd balked and batwinged and pissed and moaned, just as I'd wanted to do:

_Fucking party invitations? What is this? Do I look like a party-type of girl?_

I shook my head… _No._

She'd looked me over and thought, _"You goin'?"_

I'd shrugged and grabbed out my cold PBR from my back pocket and popped the tab and downed it in one and squinted at The Invitation again.

"I mean, what the fuck, right? An invite to a 'town's do'? We're VAMPIRES for chrissakes! And they want us to come revel, dance, drink, _eat_ with all the townies on _Halloween_ of all things?"

"I know." Angst-ridden Alice had made a bitter face like she'd just sucked a lemon. "I _am_ ghouls and goblins and gory and gone and dead."

I'd nodded in agreement.

"Dammit!" She'd rolled her eyes back and forth to me again, the hunted-haunted creature, "M'Esme and Carl are going. _And_ Em and Rose too.

"Well, I guess I have to go shoplifting then," she'd announced.

_True._

"And I'm bringing a guest." She'd cackle-laughed in sudden, disquieting, malformed glee.

_Oh fuck._ "Jesus, you Midgety Magpie, you can't invite _her!"_

"Can too. If I have to go to this 'shindig', _she's_ coming with me."

Bella had strolled over with slapdash sexy hair and a wide smile on lips pouty from bein' pursed and pretty over my dick not two hours before, the heat of her skin a barometer of wantonness, "What're you talkin' about?"

Alice had snorted.

I'd kept the talised invite in my hand and lifted my arm to the sky so she'd skirmish with me, get those tits and that ass and those hips right against me… _again._

A line of white waist skin, her dimpled chin, her bright eyes, her fun laugh.

She'd jumped and jumped and failed.

I snuck the card into her waistband and hauled her body to me.

She'd bent away from my feasty kiss and reached back.

She'd read the invitation and clapped.

Clapped her hand to my mouth, then my jaw and throat and sent up a rumble-deep-dirty-grumble from my chest, "We are so going."

I'd groaned and swallowed and nipped-sank to her collarbone and heaved up my unheavenly eyes.

"We are going, Eddie."

_Shit._

_Alrighty then._

"Then I choose the costumes."

Manx-Kitten tittered as she'd parasoled back to Jizz's trailer.

"Okay?" Bella bent away again, with her lips, not her hips, that met and held and matriculated against my cock's hardness.

"I'm the Dom, you're the sub."

A roasting laugh had lifted up out of Bella, and her eyes had suddenly become so nasty-nice I fisted through the mailbox and shook my head.

Sexy and sassafras, she'd told me, "You wanna tie me up, baby? Have your way? Gag me, bind me, blind me and fuck me, do you?"

_Uh yeah!_

I had been cross-eyed with the possibilities and variables of voyeuristic vilification to be had.

_Yeah._

"_**God's favorite word is 'Come'."**_

I'd untied her hands and arms. Couldn't hurt, and I most definitely loved her hands movin' all over me as she shifted closer on the bench seat (because damn right I'd removed the center console on my Sunday Best truck and replaced the bucket seats—they were fuckin' with my truck-driving-cum-foreplay).

We pulled into Mama's where the crunchy bleached shell and rabble rubble parkin' lot sped beneath my tires as I _squeezed_ into a spot; friggin' joint was alive with noise and unvigilant partygoers.

I alighted. Rounded the hood, kept my eyes on my woman, gave her my hand and helped her hop out.

I framed her face and lowered-angled so I could kiss her in a curvaceous carnal twist lap of lips, teeth, mouth… her teetering closer to me.

Then she pushed on my chest over my black t-shirt until I stepped about a millimeter back, "I'm not callin' you 'Sir' in front of everyone else…"

I bit the inside of my lip so I wouldn't glug out the dry ice laugh inside me and glared down at her instead; so mighty, so sexy-feisty, so big-small. And I glared some more until she shot out, "_Sir_."

_Damn right, baby._

Inside, the hazy-crack-whip-snap-smoke air thudded and stopped and started and ended and began like steel drums and shipper-snares and echooooo…

_Echo._

This one room-rhombus-womb-tomb was too small to mirror back all this commotion but scream-yells-cries-escapades split-spiked-filtered my ears nonetheless.

_Bam-bam-bam!_

Dread drops and stupid fuckin' human bloody scoundrels and cunts and pussies and the escalation of tar-stuck foot-thrust, hip-juts and gales of sanguine laughter like snake-biting and sword-swallowing circuses serpentined into my head and made it… _migraine… migrate._

Saxophones and fiddles and accordions and trombones. Lumbar-humming skeletons danced-walked-drank and slapped me on my back, and I had to call back the fight-urge-kill-maim call to arms.

Effervescent fluid and bubbles, and brew—_witches' brew—_beer, and one to Bella. Her ropes were tied all around her, _underneath_, and the hook-mast-headiness of her hard-hot-fraught-laugh eyes made me smile as I clinked our brown-green bottles, and we both tipped back and I tipped her back against my arm and held her to me about her waist, and I wrangled her to me with fist-finger-strokes, pullin'-tuggin' those skeins of silky-midnight-owning snap-lines.

There were a fair few too many Halloween Express vampires wanderin' about the place, chawin' on pork sucklin'. Sinking back punch of one color or another. The low ceiling dripped with black/orange/white helter-skelter decorations that danced in spectacularly frail crepe hobgoblin circlets. The lights were dimmed down to candles and wick-flicker.

Caleb manned the bar; a tall, black-grape, legume shape in eerie face paint, neck bolts and an ill-fitting tuxedo… too short in the sleeves, too tight in the collar.

_Et tu, Caleb?_

The meat packing of human bodies packed me and Bella closer together 'til I could feel both her tits, both her nipples, the wet sheen of warm perspiration drizzling between her boobs and pooling out back, in the fuckin-wanna-die-now dimples above her ass.

There was Mama Brown standin' over the only lonely A/C vent in the whole damn place, shimmy shakin' in her sausage-casing tight sequined dress that musta been a shade of red because it just looked lit-up-gray to me, the one and only colorblind vampire. A low-neck, tunic-type thing with spaghetti straps shored up over thick, black, elastic bands, because no way in _Hell_ her bosom-shelf would be contained inside cloth otherwise. On her feet were her old comfy flip flops, same damn things she wore to shovel out the swine slop. On her head was a puffy-blond-brown mane, and her lips were garish-somethin'-or-t'other. Her musc;led arms billowed as she grabbed her hips and doo-wapped across the floor to hug my Li'l Momma.

_Tina fuckin' Turner had never been turned out so well, and… shit almighty… Mama's tits mesmerized me._

They swung so low, I bet them things unleashed knocked her belly button and could swallow my big cock whole.

_Fuck._

As she slip-swayed away, Bella snapped her fingers in front of me, "Eyes off Mama's mammaries, Eddie."

Like anyone could compare to Bella, but _shee-it_, Mama's tits were pendulous-huge and kinda fuckin' hypnotizing.

Decked out in some goddamn-I-needed-to-beat-off-again outfit I'd chosen and Alice had stolen, Bella stood up to me, almost now to my nose, on silk-tied-licks of yellow leather stilettos with black varnished soles. Wrapped like a supposedly yielding, perverted wet dream in whalebone cinches and bows and ribbons, organza or some frilly shit… _Bella was in a corset and skirt. _And it was… late-August-Basque-yellow.

The vision of her tits toppin' out and her waist pulled in and her hips rounding over and her ass appling across and her legs—long, long, long-gone legs—lifting up, up, up… I was fresh churned butter-dashed with the backs of my hands whispering against the backs of her thighs too high as I tried to drown out and die all the goddamn thoughts of every other man in the diner.

They licked their lips and looked and looked and created fantasies foul, and I'd been _completely_ narrow-sighted. Color blind? Yeah, of course. But now I was friggin' myopic too.

The sultry slew sweltered and turned me and my woman into each other, and I felt her hard shorn breaths stutter so gave her my hard strengthened leg to slip over, a little bit of relief. Curled my fingers around her ass and into her nape, claiming her as mine so the dressed-up cunts would get the picture in full, unliving color.

_Why the tarnation hadn't the Masterminding Mink warned me?_

I found her quickly, sippin' a cocktail and she cunting winked at me. With her new best phantasmagorical pal at her side, listenin' to her every thought.

The littlest fucker of all was none other than Alice in Wonderland's Red Queen, all glossy terrifyin' sheen and painted, pared down lips, and a cut-off body armor of crinolines and ruffles and geometry.

_She couldn't actually be Alice… could she? No._

Lavinia was whoever she chose to be, shimmering through historical personalities from one moment to the next at her every whim: Martha Washington, Ladybird Johnson, Jane Mansfield, Anne Franke, Mother Theresa, Princess Diana, Sylvia Plath… Virginia Woolf… Assia Weevil.

Well, fuck, the final three had all topped themselves, hadn't they.

I scowled and left Bella with Mama-Tina to reach Alice-The Spade Queen of Hearts, "Alice."

"Yes, Eddie?" Her pasty, peacock-painted eyelids blinked up at me, her eyes wide-unnatural, the ruffles faceted to her throat, "Or should I call you… _Master?"_

Lookin' askance at her _guest-ghost_, I checked with our hostess to find Mama B. all ears and second-sight herself, curtsying to Lavinia Long-dead Fisher of the Old City Jail, Charleston. The Nation's first female serial killer, and the Tight-lipped Larcenist's BFF.

"You actually brought… _her?"_ I couldn't even raise my finger against the wafty-woman as she wolfishly smiled at me. I bowed my head instead.

"So? It's not like anyone else can see her." Alice admonished and shared her straw with the watery, wide-eyed woman.

"That's not the point! _I see her,"—_and I knew I sounded like… _Holy fuckin' Shit_… I sounded like a hen-peckin' momma.

Lavinia slurped from the straw and threw her capering eye glances around, settlin' down on Bella in the background and elbowing Alice.

"Yeah, she's his woman."

They shared a secret conversation that sent Lavinia up giggling and fluctuatingfrom Madame de Pompadour to Madame du Barry, Lillie Langrty and Mata Hari.

Paramours.

_Exactly._

"Exactly," Alicesaid my word.

I shook my head to the ground and felt… bound to Lavinia as the beheading Queen wended on, "Besides, she never gets out of the jail anymore," and she had the gall to pout.

I swallowed the last ounces from my tainted PBR and pounded, "That's because she's DEAD. And she's supposed to stick to her own hauntin' grounds. Right?"

A knock to my back and replenished drinks passed around and… _what the hell in damnation did we have here?_

Jizzper and the Unfriendly Ghost.

He sidled between Alice and Lavinia and threw an arm around each of them.

The Red (whatever-ish) Queen. And the Hangman's Horror.

How the hell the dude made a stripy caterpillar work for him, I had no earthly idea. He was all animal skin vest and tight trousers and horizontal tattoos. With the biggest-fuckin' ever hookah attached to his hips and curling up in crazy-filigree to his lips with huffs and puffs and willowy smoke.

_Probably because he was one half Queer Eye and shit._

Pretty fuckin' pleased with my own pop culture reference, I wanted to show Bella I wasn't so goddamn old, but she was nowhere to be seen. Itching fingerlings feathered against my brain and turned it topside over.

_Where was she?_

I checked with Aliceand then Lavinia, and they both pointed me to the back of house. I took a puff from Jazz's pipe, and then one more hit, before I parted the skinned-skin-fleshbag mortals in my way.

I even gave up my chance at the carvin' station to get to her… the mere minutes away from Bella felt like self-imploding centuries leaving exploding minefields inside my antsy-as-fuck body to get to her, touch her, be near her, make sure she was safe.

She was in the midst of Maw and Paw, eating from a bowl of nuts and sipping a brand new brew-ha ha.

M'Esme's hair was like a red-somthin' rat's nest all over head, and she wore a black-white-tight maid's uniform.

_What the?_

Paw looked skeevy as all get-out—his hair long, skank hanks of liver-blond, gaunt face, a hunchback in a torn-to-shreds jacket.

They slinked together to a new song, and the throng kept throwin'… _toilet paper?_... at them.

"Who the hell are they?" I snuck Bella to me and close-kissed from the corner of her beer-cool lips to her thrillish earlobe.

She gurgled and threw her throat open to the side and hoola-hooped her arms to the air, her hips mashing to my pelvis and the wide withhold of my cock. "Baby," she touched her index finger to my jaw and her thumb to my mouth, "you are _so_ behind the times."

"Am not." I pushed, pressed, stamped and towered and lowered and torridly ground against her open-sensual-iambic body.

"Are too."

"Not."

I bit her cheek and the tender-nothing of her hilled tit, laving my tongue under the yellow structure to rasp-tap at her nipple-nub.

Grabbing my hair, she hauled me away, "Okay then, are you familiar with this?

_I've got an itch to scratch  
I need assistance  
Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me  
I wanna be dirty  
Thrill me, chill me, fulfill me  
Creature of the night_

"Dunno'. But it makes me want to fuck you, Bella." I smoothed my hands to her ass and down to her slit and painted her on top of my dick, driving her to the back wall, caging her with my hands, forearms, my mouth, my look, my ropes.

She laughed-bit my mouth and eyelids and lifted up to yank my hair and called out a quiet slur-_Sir, _"Told ya. _You're old, _baby. Where you been?" She pulled my lips away from her tits where I'd just started makin' love all over her. "You were seventy-four at the time, babe… don't you recall at all?"

_All I remembered was of her, most of it right now, and when she'd said she loved me, and when she fucked me… a lot…_

I mutely negated.

"Rocky Horror Picture Show?" Bella turned so her sassy ass sat to my cock, and made me watch the slinky-creepy-walk-dance of my foster-_sort of-_parents. "Magenta and RiffRaff."

She nougated closer and I held her tighter, and I fuckin' delighted in her joy.

_So this is what it felt like… love…_

Shit, I was goin' soft.

_Maybe just in my non-heart, definitely not in my cock._

Worse than that, or maybe better, I was just enjoyin' watching Bella have a good time. Smiling, laughin', dancing, chattin'… her freed-from-harm-and-past smile was surely as sexy as her boobs and poon. So long as other cunts weren't tryin' to catch a grope.

The music switched from the squawky old stereo to a new set-up on the shuffleboard stage. Rusty Hook—_heard that was his name_—the big, black, old man took up his banjo and set it atop his kettledrum tum, and his old-jovial face lit up as he began to strum and hum-sing in his ancient-past-times grit-voice. He played the shit out of that thing and Bella was tossin' and swaying and patting her hands all over me, the smile on her face alight with ceaseless life and wonder and passion for it all!

Bubba shuffled by, flashin' me from under his—_what the hell was that abomination, a goddamn cloak?—_a t-shirt readin' 'Paddle faster. I hear banjos.'

_Jesus._

But this frigid troving-secret sloughed up my back and tugged at my titanium spine until I twisted away, swattin' back at the apparition…_more wraiths._

I stole my look from Bella and scrutinized the almost-Sullivan's-Island stompin' ground. I was weary as hell with one-eighth of my brain-shell; there were far too many robed personages floatin' around.

Including Bubba, who had returned.

"I'm Felix, bro!"

He headlocked me and I nut-punched him.

He fell to the floor and a long piercing heel tapped his chest, "Heidi," Rose motioned over her outfit.

_Heidi?_ She didn't look one bit smock-frocked or Alpine or Swiss-Mystery to me; in fact she looked a bit fuckin' vampish… _alluring_ to all the human men not already focusedon Bella's traipsing dance and long lethal legs and spillin' out bosom.

"_Fuck, man… Heidi, of Volturi fame."_

Christ.

"Shut the fuck up! Why do y'all keep sayin' the 'V' word? And ain't this," I motioned to their rig, "in poor taste?"

"Whatever," Bubba somersaulted up from the floor, and Rose wiped down his ass and they both quipped in unison, "Lighten up."

Easier said than done, sometimes.

Specters of the past were called out to gather by Lavinia's open invitation. _Party crashin' phantasms. _

"I need to use the ladies'," Bella sucked at my Adam's apple and down my sternum, shreddin' any worried-watchin' thought from me.

"Uh," I grabbed her ass, "What?"

"I need to pee!" she shook her hair out and the scene of the silty Chesapeake tresses muffled my hearing so I read her lips instead, then leaned down, bent my knees, and kissed that sumptuous mouth, sliding left to right before pickin' at her cupid's bow.

She jiggled-giggled and half-slapped my cheeks, "Eddie, I gotta take a piss, baby. I'll be right back."

I nodded dumbly and followed closely even though she shot a look of 'Back the fuck off' at me.

_Mama's Ma'am sat where she always used to, in the rocker by the ladies' lavatory. _The empty-seemin' chair creaked. A faded dark hand shot out towards Bella, clasped her hand in a cool link, just a breeze to Bella. She placed their entwined hands to her heart where warm glow radiated like the smile on her dusk-bronze face. She nodded to Bella and let her go to swoosh through her cloud-gathered form and then looked to me as her permanence was erased, monotonin', _"Y'all keep her close, safe… from harm."_

Caleb's would-be-murderer, killed and shoved off the Wando's docks in a pinebox by vigilante Rose, illumined in and out. I feinted toward his weathery image and watched him smoke away with a final leer on his maggot-eaten lips.

James and Royce had made the most unlikely buddies in the background, sharing a fifth of rotgut, slurring to the lyrics. Alice and Lavinia took care of them, incarnatin' every vampire-human-woman they'd ever wronged at the moments of their deaths… ending with Alice allegedly goin' up in flames… _and Rose._ Her tireless cries crypted out of Lavinia's tightwire throat to 'Stop, Please stop! _Mommy, Daddy… please… I can't, how can they keep, why would he? Hurt, it hurts so much, I want to die._" Then she stood ten feet tall, Lavinia-made-mortal-immortal Rose in her wedding dress, waving her hand before wielding it to Royce again, splicing the ghost's body like a gutted-flailing fish until they trip-hazed away so fast a comet-trail of imbued glow followed them.

Too many wannabe vampires attempted to spook about and I laughed at them-they weren't near good lookin' enough—then I made certain to scare them; just a small hiss-growl-rumble from deep in my tumble chest had their fake-fangs clattering to the scratched, beaten up floor.

_Assholes. As if they knew._

And g'damned werewolves aplenty! There were malformed mastiffs and surly-like Saint Bernards all tryin' to pass off as the NOLA Newfoundlands/Louisiana Loup-garou. There were jackals, too. Or maybe that was just Ja-cub. Sure smelled nose-curdlingly like him.

_They're here, Eddie._

"Shut it, Lavinia," I gave her the finger, and she held her breath and bled away all globe-ball on a dimmer switch like.

_They're here…_

Fuck that. _I was here_, Bella was here, and she finally exited the restroom to find me swoopin' all over her.

"I need you now," I pressed right against her.

"_Mmmm, _can I use my hands?" She reparteed easily. Parting my lips with her tongue and touching all the pulse-points I no longer had, but still felt.

I swept her off her feet, and she giggled as I moved massively towards the back door.

"Yes." _Whatever you want; yes and now._

"Can I yell?"

I jugged her boobs out of the structured sunshine and lapped her nipples and she… _yelled_, "Mmm hmmm," I murmured into her deep cleavage.

She ground over my recessed cock and grabbed-groped-gladdened, "_Can I cum when I want to?"_

I was put off for just an n-second by a be-cloaked warrior headin' into the purple/black/orange block party… _Huh, that didn't look like Bubba…_

But I wanted my woman, and I _needed her now._ My cock had just about tried to work through the copper zipper of my leathers all night long. _Subservient?_ Hell. Neither Bella nor my Pavlov cock knew the meaning of that shit.

I lamented, for another heartily bothered quarter minute, about the best laid plans… and… _Fuck that!... I just wanted to get laid._

Thoughts of _Grim Reaper and Skeletor and American Werewolf and Voodoo and Witches and Vampires all met and bounced off my back._

The frame of the cheap screen door slapped, and I smacked her across the yard to one of Mama's cookhouses, "Oh, _yeah,_ you're gonna cum, love. Whenever you want. And a whole lotta times too."

Because, who was I kiddin'? She was no submissive. I simply needed to be inside of her… she wouldn't bend or break or beg… _too much. _

We both looked at the whirligig green tractor and the chains and the irons and the tires and the shiftstick and I thought about the box of toys I had in the back of my Sunday Best Ford HD just waitin' to be used on her, but that shit didn't matter right now.

She raised an eyebrow.

I raised her leg.

I lowered my pants to my thighs.

I ripped through the naught knots between us and circulated to the un-hurt welts with my fingertips and mouth. Makin' it all better… and hotter, wetter, readier, _healing_.

"You were gonna tie me up to the tractor," Bella saluted my cock with her ten fingers, takin' me from sticky tightness to tickling, tufting, toughness—so goddamn hard and droppin' cum-venom and curving up into the shelf of her palm that if I didn't get my dick inside her, she'd have a creamy-cold rainbow of jizz plastered from her neck to her tits to her stomach to her pussy.

_Fuckin' mindreader._

"Yeah, I was," I huskily made out over her nipples, shearing her from the basque down to her waist so the two halves hung open like a melon, showcasin' her… _melons._

_Dewdrop, slip slop._

I slapped her skirt up to her waist and wasted no more time.

Her frail clothing catapulted left and right and smacked a fat hog in the face.

"Maybe next time…" Bella spiraled over my jaw and seesawed to my lips, kissin' each corner and then driving hard into my mouth as I braced and bounced once and spread my wealthy dick inside of her gorgeous delta.

_Fuck. Me. _

"Fuck me," she shushed.

_Yes._

The clatter-slack-board house bounced from its foundation as I drove into Bella; her throat back, her lips smilin', her notes laughing!

I crested, claimed, and she ground, circled and owned…_fucking owned me._

Dime-flaked tears flecked off her cheeks, but she was grinning-smiling-gritting her teeth so I sucked her tit and touched her clit so softly and widened my legs and a… _rusty nail_ pinged out of the shed and ricocheted from the tractor.

I lunged up and held once… I thrust and spilled up inside Bella as she bellowed to the blind night so the blond stars were nothin' to her orgasm, and she Big-Banged and tangled up my hair and screamed, "_Ahhh, FUCK! Eddie! I love you!"_

Stamps of breath like bullish licks and five more thick hard shoves, and I filled her and fell over her and we sank to the ground. _I didn't have words… that Bella still did meant I'd have to try harder next time._

Through the stickle back forest and the nickel back moon and the rub-rum-soak-stroke of me and Bella stuck together with my cock still beasting inside her, I heard them comin'; Alice, Jazz, _Lavinia, _Bubba, Rose, Maw and Paw… I squinted through the cold-hoar-whore-melamine October night towards their bizarre masquerade-march.

_Couldn't they see I was workin' here? Or at least, workin' Bella over?_

I held my cock against my thigh, cum-venom-dribbles sliding down my leg and still connecting me to Bella.

Hallowed Alice met me first, blinding me with a vision of a gore-dead-body out on the soft shoulder of Coleman Boulevard.

_Bled out._

"_They were here," _she silenced, just as Lavinia had warned me.

The Volturi.

_Cocksuckin' cockblockers. _I covered Bella with my body, turned to them and intoned, "Well, ain't this predictable…"

_~Fin~_

_

* * *

_

~Happy Halloween, y'all!~

The link to the Countdown to Halloween II is on my profile, and stay tuned there for the gigantic author collaboration.


	28. FINE

Cheers to my betas—Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta—you are both wonderfully supportive even when you're kicking my ass (and chapters) into shape!

Thanks to the chickies all over FB ! Love to a very special woman, and yes…it is _yew_. (No, GK, for fuck's sake not you this time. Though you are special, or at least touched in the head. But cheers to your bro for his song choice!). And of course, never-ending, unlimited, unbelievable thanks to all who've alerted, read and reviewed DC's!

Disclaimer:Oh, come _on_. Please? I'm just gonna say it under my breath then _*eddie is mine*_. Don't Own Twilight. Just the Double Wide ;).

~~Fightin', frightening, fuckin'; that's what we're all about, ladies. So very NSFW. Tuck in~~

_F.I.N.E., _Aerosmith

youtube . com/watch?v=aLKZCVvBcBU

* * *

**F.I.N.E.**

_**F**__ucked Up, __**I**__nsecure, __**N**__eurotic, and __**E**__motional__**  
**_

My booming voice rose out of me with destructive force, "You FUCKIN' KNEW!"

Alice had the goddamn sense for a change to slither as far away from me as possible, "Yeah."

I stalked forward, the barely withheld rage making my steps tight, cagey, on the verge of a wild unleashing, "You led us to her."

Stopping in front of the Undercover Cunt, I bared my teeth. I felt like a slathering beast, I _felt_ like I was a goddamn _second _away from cleaving her in two with my fingers stretching her insides out, from top to bottom. "You _delivered_ Bella to… to…"

"How easily you forget my name, _lover_," _her_ poshly-accented voice drossed over me so, like the animal I was, I shifted from one prey to the next, venom leaking down my throat, my arm swinging out like an arrow, my muscles rippling all over with this urge-this powerful, undeniable surge to _slaughter_ to keep Bella safe, "You don't address me that way."

Bella glared at Chelsea, "Oh, I second that… he ain't your lover and never was. You call him Eddie, only."

Chelsea reined in a whole lotta 'Fuck You' and bowed her head a consequential fraction, "Of course."

_Okay, _the weirdness of this scenario in the Convention Center was getting through my bullheaded, hotheaded haze enough that I had one friggin' thread to hang onto: _Bella had some sort of control over Chelsea._

Not the other way around.

And _damn_, Bella had balls.

I wanted to pull her behind me, tackle her to floor, cover her with my body—for once not to fuck her, but to protect her—but I watched in complete awe as she walked to Chelsea and demanded, "You say what you came to say, and then you fucking leave us. Go back to your Volturi Vipers, _and you won't come here again unless I call upon you._"

_Holy._

"Shit," Bubba exhaled.

Inhaling hotly, I drilled the Back Stabbing Bitch and then Chelsea, trying to auger into their brains.

Chelsea touched her temples like she had an instant migraine but then simpered at me, "You like what you see?"

_Slag._

Chelsea goddamn _knew _I couldn't hear a single word from her.

"I've been practicing," she was more alien to me than she'd ever been, and this whole damn scene was approaching horror movie proportions.

With her, the head-huntin' bloodsucking succubus. "Practicin' what, pray tell? How to be even more of a soul-sucking whore?"

Bella snorted, and why the hell not, _she_ seemed to be… _untouchable._

"Oh, I don't need to bone up on that, lov-" Bella hit her with a finger pointing, "_Eddie._" For a couple of seconds, Chelsea lifted the musty curtains of her mind, and I was pounded like a freight train with a random blizzard of images and thoughts that eddied like a whirlpool around one central figure in a long cloak with mahogany hair peeking from beneath a hood, a luscious mouth curved in a sinister smile, creamy skin blooming over cheeks and sparkling brown eyes narrowed and scheming.

_Bella?_

"No, _this_,_ is what I've been learning,_" Chelsea again dropped a mist around herself until everything was smoggy, and I even had a hell of a time holding onto that last vignette of Bella as a… vampire? A Vulture? Bella undead… _but her eyes…_

As I chased the portrait to lock it away, I fumed, _Shit! First Bella, then the Traitor Trixie and, now, THIS? My so-called talent was turning more into a fucking useless liability because I couldn't for the life, or death, of me get a grip on Chelsea's thoughts._

Bella pushed her hand up the dent of muscle in the middle of my back. Chelsea cocked her head in the other direction, badly mimicking human gestures, "I've got a lot of new party tricks. The power of The Brothers, Eddie," she sighed, "such a shame you didn't think well enough of me to mate me."

Before Bella could pull out whatever new fuckin' devices she seemed to have layin' around, ready to be fired up at will, I grabbed Chelsea by the throat, feeling the whispers of her breath gradually fallowing to gasps. I watched her eyes bulge and her astonishment rise; Bella looked on with utter disinterest as I choked the Lone Sloane Ranger to the hilt with my banding hand, every winch of my knuckles crushing her windpipe.

Chelsea was immobile.

_Chelsea could break out of this if she wanted, right?_

Oh, fuck this conscience bullcrap, she should fuckin' die, right here right now, and by my hands.

_Right?_

I close-mouthed back at Alice, because Chelsea wasn't even battling for release… she was limp as a ragdoll**.**, "What's goin' on?"

"Bella doesn't want her to hurt you."

"So, this got somethin' to do with her shield?"

Alice squinted her eyes and went through her Miss Cleo routine, "_Hmm, _not exactly. It's hard to tell, but I think it's more of a control thing...," and _I _thought maybe her crystal ball noggin' had taken too many hard knocks.

_Fuck._

"Me," Bubba whispered.

_Okay, so he was all up in the ranks of people who could read my mind too, fuckin' apparently._

I dropped her deadweight like a steaming turd, because… _FUCK!_ I wasn't gonna kill someone with no fight. That's what _they_ did.

She fell to all fours as a cat, hissing breaths in and out of her starved airways, blinking at Bella, growling at me until Bella tutted her.

Bounding to her feet, Chelsea's mask was back in place, her brassiness as steady and sticky as her lacquered hair. Everything in place, not a speck on her, _too perfect, gilded, untouched… _very fuckin' Regent's Park.

Bella was focused on the canary, waiting for her to sing.

"Perhaps another demonstration would be more to your liking?" Unless she was gonna rip her own limbs off and set herself on fire, I highly doubted that; but before I had the chance to say anything, Chelsea was nothin' but wisps of vapor, her clipped, precise intonation like vespers.

_Jesus…_

"Christ!" Bubba belly ached.

She spooked Rose—which wasn't a good move because even though she was all Cunty-Bitch the Unfriendly Ghost, Rose still managed to cuff her hard to the throat. That jab made her defossilize just enough so she flickered in wavery form before she misted away to headbutt Bubba, and he was still holding onto his forehead with his 'Number One' foam hand when she rose right above Jizz.

He feinted forward, rolled to his back and kicked her chest so she assimilated back into herself.

"I don't think so, _darlin'_," he drawled and watched her drop to the floor, her body permanent and grounded again.

She laughed and came at me, stopping four feet short, "I could still work you over if you want."

Apparently she'd forgotten about Bella's own hold over her, the Blitzed Ditz, because when she made to me, she was brought up quick by Bella's lowered voice, "This is over."

Chelsea frowned, and her body wanted to get at me, but she… _couldn't_.

Bella smiled, "Though, thanks for the floorshow, my dear girl. It sure is nice to know what we're workin' with."

_Christ in a coffin, she sounded like Maw when she got her wooden spoon out and made us thank her for beatin' the ever-loving shit out of us after a hiding. _

Chelsea made over to Bella.

I breathed so hard my entire body solidified into a statue filled with… _avarice._

"It's okay, baby," Bella leaned up against me, makin' damn certain to brush her tits against my upper arm, tucking her fingers to my hair, "I'm in control here."

_The only thing that caress helped was my erection. So my cock filled my jeans, and my thoughts fled from safety to sex in an instant._

Feeling me up with her thigh brought to my hips, Bella's attempt at soothing me really sucked. Her knee rubbed my dick and then pushed lower against my balls, and her wet breaths fell and her luscious lips firmly sucked my throat, "We'll get to _this_ later."

"Later?" I grasped her fully to me and dove into her mouth, wrapped my tongue around hers and cupped her ass so her legs spread wide around my hips and her hands purchased my shoulders, her nails trying to dig in.

_Goddamn._

"Hell yeah!" Bubba threw some stale popcorn at us.

Bella lapped the corner of my mouth with her lips and ground the tip of my cock with her hips and parted from me.

Fuckin' all business all of a sudden, she turned to Chelsea, "How's this going down?"

"Well, you can keep a secret can't you?" Then Chippy-faced Chelsea nodded over to the Tiny Torn Day Tripper "I know she can."

"They need to go," Bella looked my brothers and Rose over, giving them a sanctuary even I couldn't.

"I'm stayin'," _funny, I'd said this before, a few nights ago, under different circumstances, when her life hadn't even begun to be embroiled in this dung pile._

"'Course you are, baby," she said the same words as then.

"She stays," I pointed at the Range Rover Raven**.**

"So, I can do this the easy way," Chelsea watched over my kin with a viral gleam, "Or the hard way… _by systematically removing their personal attachments to one another._

"Yeah, they're goin'," I decided.

Ushering them out like she was Chelsea the Chitin-faced Cruise Director instead of the Captain of this liner goin' down, she assured them everything would be fine, even while she gathered information on their bonds and stored all the info away to get brownie points with Ugly-Mugged Marcus.

Jizz hung onto Alice's hand until the last moment when the fire door closed us in this huge tomb.

With Jazz out of the way, Alice charged forward, "Test her."

"_What the fuck do you mean? Test her?_ She's not a goddamn used car to be tried out!" I looked at Bella.

Bella assented.

I was arrested by the sight of her, in command of herself and us around her, "Go for it."

But she didn't understand what it felt like to be cut free of all relationships, to be torn off this planet and cut loose… minus the gravitational noose of… _love_.

An emotionless, bondless captive, _a slave._

"We need to know," Alice promoted.

With Bella's agreement, Chelsea's rapacious grin formed, "My pleasure."

"You will _not_ touch my-"

"_Shhh_, I'm working here," she licked her lips, the flesh eating parasite.

She was so concentrated on takin' Bella apart, feeling by feeling, that I was able to wrangle in a few good concrete-sized knocks to her head, feeding the anger inside, the wrath pouring out of my fists and boots and hands.

Ramming her back, I _loved_ the sound of Chelsea's spine bouncing off slabs.

I ripped at her throat and pistoned my boots to her ribs and… _all the while she maintained Bella._

Even while glue-like clots ran from her nose, she watched Bella.

Alice rushed, "Well?"

"I'm trying," Chelsea _tried_ harder.

Like she was straining to take a dump.

"Nothing," Bella was warm with triumph. "I felt nothing."

_Well, wasn't that Chelsea's point?_

"I mean, I still felt _everything._"

Satisfied, Alice sat down, and I sped to Bella.

"Before we do this," Bella whispered, "before we get into why you are here, and why Alice made sure I was, too… _can you do something about Eddie?_"

Because obviously she forgot I had the ears of a bat or some shit… whispers weren't gonna cut it.

"You want me to?" Chelsea looked confused. "You have to... _you have to tell me to do it, _otherwise I won't be able."

Beating to Bella, running my fingers between hers, thumbing over her palm, I ranted, "Why? _I need to be with you, Bella._"

"It's not a good idea, Eddie," she stroked my face. "You know we have to keep our thoughts separate, you should go wait with the others."

_Because one way or the other, they were going to get their hands on us_.

Because it all came down to Bella's brain being impenetrable, and we fuckin' hoped it would be… against Aro. _Because_, if I knew the shit that was gonna go down, and if Arse-face got to me_,_ it'd be Armageddon all over the fuckin' place. And they would not stop before they had me, Bella, Alice and Jizz.

The Fuckin' Four Horsemen. _Shoot, I bet Bella would look hot in chaps and nothin' else. _

I shook away my libidinous thoughts; they'd have us as a matched set of horses with them the pox-ridden gentry, pulling their carriage around, makin' good with their carnage.

"I want to be here," I pulled Bella into me.

"You sure?" she drew her fingers through my hair, "Because-"

"I don't care… _been here, done that._"

"Okay," she held me while she looked at Chelsea, "Do it now_._"

"Wait, Bella I-"

"_Love."_

That one word…

And the almond scent of cyanide.

_Underneath a cloth I couldn't fight out of._

I breathed, I lived, and that was it.

I wandered in no man's land.

It was heavenly white yet dark as night, and I fuckin' knew… _I knew this wasn't right._

Cauterized, my emotions were a muggy black hole, but I dimly heard voices.

One I recognized.

_My senses were lead._

I pushed out my hands to touch, but there was nothin' I wanted.

There were sharply focused ideas, like pinpricks poking through the smudges. _Bella_? In white. _Bella._ With fight on her face and draped in dusk.

That… that plaza.

_That sandstone piazza._

That heartbeat.

_Beat._

Bella?

I woke from this nightmare yelling and retching, "BELLA!"

"I'm here, I'm here," she coasted against me.

_My fuckin' god…_

I attached myself to her hot human body.

"You can thank me later," Chelsea said.

"For what?" my voice was croaky and my words slow.

Her smile was more of a sneer, "For using a woman's touch to give you... _give us…_ what we all want."

Like she was just redecoratin' the double wide.

"You ain't no woman," I met her Sangria-colored irises. "And you don't know what I want."

A flash forward stalled me.

Bella. In white.

_Bella, bone white._

Bella… _veiled?_

"We want her to become a vampire," Chelsea proposed. "What do you want?"

"Bella."

"How?"

"Any way I can have her."

"Good."

All kewpie doll and Kew Gardens, Chelsea mentioned, "Oh, and by the way," she paused, "_How shall I put this so you understand?_ _Ah yes,_ I'm batting for the other team.."

"What, you're a lesbian now?" _Well, that didn't set right… was she into Bella's bush now too?_

"No, I no longer give my allegiance to Aro."

_Fuckin' grand. _

Stretching my arms up, I loosened my shoulders of a hefty weight, cracked my neck, and my lips split in a carnivorous grin. Fast as a hurricane wind, I pulled back from my relaxed pose, and my knuckles mashed up into her jaw with such force her entire face wobbled-like on of those molds of Jell-O M'Esme was fond of makin' for the church's potluck suppers-before I kicked my steel-capped Timberland into her chest. Her body swung with the greatest of fuckin' ease, sailing up and over and around, crashing through the double metal doors.

I popped my knuckles and called out with a satisfied smile, "Just thought I'd see you out, you know… manners and all."

Bella rubbed my shoulders, "M'Esme would be proud," and as she kissed my cheek she asked, "Feelin' better now?"

_Feelin' better?_

My skin felt all pins and needles and my heart-that empty cavern, that carbon dated lump of coal… _or maybe it was still there, the seat of my emotions_, though my cock filled suddenly as if it begged to disagree—yeah, my_ heart_ felt like it had been Hellraisered.

Feelin' better?

Well, now that I thought on it, "Not yet, darlin'."

I considered taking out a full deck of stadium seating to relieve the tension, but I knew it wouldn't resound with the bone crushing _crunch_ I still needed to hear even after sending Chelsea packin' with my shitkicker to her torso with the obvious message 'Italy or Bust.'

_Alice_.

She had a fuckin' lot to answer for.

And maybe my fist could help her find the words I wanted to hear.

She ducked my first blow with a spitting hiss.

I jumped right over her and wrenched her back into the strangling cradle of my arms. I _felt better_ when I heard the screeching pop of joints loosening. Howling furiously, Bubble and Pipsqueak knocked her skull back to my face, rattling my brain in its cranial cage.

I dropped her like she was more steaming shit, then lunged back as she swung about, windmilling around each other and catching punches, fingers tearing into flesh and gripping hard, slicing teeth closing in to snap among curses and growls and, "Fuck YOU!" I grabbed her head, and the small thing of it fit right between my palms as if it was made to be squished by me. Tightening the vice, I watched her slate blue veins surface to her skin and race faster.

Bella stepped beside me, "I feel like I should intervene, but I'm kinda pissed too."

I grunted and my nose flared, and I was caught in a tug of war with first Alice's vaporizing eyes, and then with her thoughts as she friggin' pushed them with speed into my head: all clean and clear and crisp and all of Bella. Bella as she stood right now beside us watching, _Bella was deciding_, Bella's decision firming up, Bella as one of us… Bella in a robe, Bella… hooded. Bella… _veiled._

Released just before her head popped like a balloon, the Petite Paranoia fell forward, and I took two paces back.

"Feel," she panted, rubbed her temples, "better?"

"You ready to talk now?" was I all I had for her.

"What?" Alice reared up, almost recovered from her beatin'.

I whispered in a rush the first thing that came to mind, a dedicated worry over what was happenin' inside Bella's head, "Chelsea's not makin' her do this, is she?" I spoke soft, low and speedily so Bella wouldn't hear, though her eyes remained pinned to my mouth, and her glare was focused on me.

Alice shook her head, "No, it's all her. Chelsea simply showed her a path that she can't help but follow… not with the way she loves you."

_Fuck. This did not make me feel better. _ And it was supposed to. I should be fuckin' shouting and runnin' around like I was getting a contact high from Bubba after he downed a pint of NyQuil but… _this was what I wanted._

Yeah, this is what I _want._

But not because she had to goddamn save me. I wasn't no pussy, I could take care of myself and my own, and that included a human Bella if that's how she fuckin' wanted to live.

"So, you're a pawn too, huh?"

"Yes, pretty much. But I knew it would come to this, _and I decided to come to you all_." Alice let me know she'd take responsibility for her actions.

"Pawn to a King or Queen?"

"A King… for now," Alice answered.

"Yeah," I rubbed that aching hole in my chest, _"yeah._ So 'they'," I used them air quotes, "Sent Chihuahua Chelsea here to convince Bella… to… to…"

"Pick out china patterns?" Alice was back to… _well,_ bein' a fuckin' bitch apparently as she deliberately taunted me.

"Don't even go there," I raised my finger at the Double Operative Douchebag.

"Got cold feet?" she and I were still talkin' in undertones, shooting to each other like bullets and even though our little chat had only taken about fifteen seconds, Bella was beginning to close in on me.

I used my index finger to smooth out her frown and earned a tight smile. I leaned down to kiss the corner of her mouth and got myself a small parting of her lips. I tugged back her hair and as if on reflex her mouth opened under mine with a hungry gasp. _Oh god, I missed the feel of tongue on mine._ I folded her into me and grabbed her ass, seating her against my hard-on.

Bella ripped deliciously at my hair and moaned away, my lips following hers to nip and pluck and lick, "I don't like it when you do that speed talkin' thing."

"Duly noted, ma'am" I smirked.

"_Hmmmph_," Bella let me kiss her once more then turned to Alice who'd been itemizing the treasury of stolen goods in her econo-sized purse, "So they know about you now."

"Some of them," Al-heistmeister pulled a never-ending chain of… Hermes scarves from her tote, inspectin' the price tags with joy.

I rolled my eyes impatiently, "And you trust Chelsea?"

"Got no choice, do I… not having free will can do that to you." She hummed as she clearly found what she was dumpster divin' for, a pair of fingerless black gloves that looked about as old as me… vintage with smart glossy bows tacked on with carat-large diamonds.

_Lucifer only knew whose tomb she'd taken those from._

"So, why Florida?" Bella was staring at the diamonds and twisting her thumb around her ring finger.

"Hmmm?" Alice pulled the gloves onto her pale hands, watching the gems glisten in the halogen lights from far up above in the dome, "_Oh that_. The wolves, of course. Still not to be trusted, you know?"

It was Bella's turn to roll her eyes in exasperation; she was about to start in on a defense of the Pound Puppy, which I just didn't want to hear when Alice interrupted, "That and it's Florida, right? Disney World, Busch Gardens, etcetera. She doesn't get out of the Castle much, at least not unless she's stood watching over Aro's underhanded slaughters and captures." The Loony Lifter looked at me, "And she wanted to catch the Monster Trucks… a real American cultural phenomenon."

_Well, I couldn't blame her on that score._

I sat down on an orange-ish plastic chair, pulling Bella with to me… onto my lap. I shifted my hips forward until my cock met the sweet purchase of her ass. "Yeah, and you…"

Bella blinked up at me with her Bambi eyes softly frilled in black eyelashes, "What?"

"What do you mean, 'what'?" I got as close to her as possible, while still wearing these nuisance clothes and not having my dick right up inside her. "Why'd you make Chelsea do that to me?"

She sketched over my features, touching the bridge of my nose and the lobes of my ears and finally landing on my lower lip, "Oh, that." She winked at me… _winked._

I clenched up into her again.

She planted her hands on the arms of the chair and spread her legs wider over me, "You can't know everything, baby. And you're the one who said you wanted to stay."

I nuzzled between her tits and hated, _fuckin' abhorred,_ that there was hope bitten by doom and death and…_just like that_, I understood I might never know Bella's plan.

Turning to the side, I licked to the hill of her boob, "What was with that Madam Prime Minister thing back there?"

I flicked against her nipple so her voice faltered from low and sure to high and reedy, "Don't know… _I just knew._ It was something inside of me," speaking off, I had somethin'_ I _wanted to get inside of her. "There was a power born in her presence, I felt she couldn't harm me… that I could control her.

"Damn weird, right?"

_Err, no._ Because fuckin'-A right she had that power over me—_and my cock, which was making itself increasingly known with its own pounding presence._

"_Christ, Bella._ You have any idea how much I wanted to kill her?"

"Um, yeah, I think you made that loud and clear, Eddie," Bella laughed and stood up.

"Let's get the hell out of here now, please?" she took my hands and hauled and hauled and braced herself and frowned in concentration and then gave up.

"So that commanding thing only works on Chelsea, huh?" she asked.

"Oh, not at all, darlin', you can fuckin' grope me, manhandle me, tell me what to do and how to do you whenever you want… _you know I'll give it to you good,_" I winked and finally found my feet, frigging lovin' the way, though her aura or some shit was absolutely huge, her body was still petite and mine and her curves fit right to me as if she'd been molded to my form.

_~~ll~~_

"Get in the bus," I was POTUS—_Pres of Oracles and Juan King now._

"But I left my favorite shirt on the warshline!"

"I'm sure Alice will be more than happy to steal you more," I assured.

_She_ fuckin' _lit up at the prospect._

_Sorted._

"Get in, now." What the fuck were they waitin' for? They stood outside in the parking lot milling about and mumbling to each other.

"But-" Bubba was thinkin' about the four-wheeler he was having kitted out.

"Don't give two shits. Have it delivered. We're goin' back to Cainwhore so I can screw Bella in the relative safety of the trailer, and my Bronco, _and on top of the ice chest_," Bella whirled to me, her lips parted, her pussy molten.

"You like that?" I turned my black-gold gaze on her.

"Yeah." She started wrangling up the stragglers fast as you could say 'Fuck Me Now'.

I caught her elbow, "So that sex embargo thing you got goin' on, it's over?"

"Oh, yes, whatever you say, _Sire,_" she lilted up at me.

_She did NOT just say that._ I was gonna bust outta my jeans, my cock was a fuckin' enormous rock and… _shit! She just called me her sire._

Seeing my eyes peeled to her pussy and then her legs, her ankles in them strappy sandal things, Bella lifted her denim skirt up over her thighs, enough to tease the goddamn shit out of me, "You play your cards right, maybe I'll even call you '_Sir'_ later."

Fuck and yes, that did it… _nearly, _"But not Daddy?"

"We'll see," she coyly flirted.

_Yes, yes we will, in about four hours because I could get this lumbering road beast well over eighty if I dropped some weight_.

Right there and then I considered taking out Bubba like raccoon roadkill...

I shook my head and held out my palm to the big lug, "Keys."

_Yeah, I was so ready to rip off my clothes and just fuck her standing against the fake wood walls._ We needed to track now.

"But," Bubba flicked off some nonexistent earwax from the serrated keys, "she's my baby."

Rose fronted, "Thought I was your baby."

With him distracted, I made my point, _harder_, "You drive like a blue-rinsed biddy, now give me the keys, or I swear I'll whip it out right here."

"_Oh my hell_," Bella leaned against the laminate tabletop.

"Damn fuckin' true, darlin'," I started to loosen my jeans, "C'mere, _now._"

Bubba shoved the keyring into my hand, "Put it away, braw."

_Shit._

Bella giggled.

Rose glared.

Alice gem-mined in her purse once more for… _a headscarf, of fuckin' course, one of them Hermes things she'd been inventorying earlier._

Jizz tied it lovingly around her hair, smacked her ass, and we three men-vamp-_whatever_ watched the trio head into the back to sit cross-legged on the bed that still had not been christened by me and Bella.

_Fuck._

Adjusting the mirrors, lookin' out the back rectangle of glass that was magnified, wishin' it was trained on Bella on that bed, all naked and dripping with my jizz on her pussy, I draped my wrist over the boat-sized steering wheel and hung out of the parking lot.

Boys were at the helm, and the chicks were at the back.

Huddled up like a flock of hens, the likes of which I'd only seen at Mepkin Abbey. They were clucking and ducking their heads together and not even holding in their laughter as Alice got up and shut the door in our faces.

_Yeah, and they could fuckin' stay there because I wasn't getting' laid and who-the-what-the-fucksit started all this vows __shit?_ I was talkin' about turning her, _not_ tryin' to tie the knot.

Bubba started right in, and I swear that hypochondriac asshole had more emo-impulses then those girls combined, "So, what'd you hear, what'd you see, what happened?"

I headed up the western alley of Florida, and the harder I hit the gas, the more the thing burped lazily along.

Fart Boy now had a place of honor on the dash.

He leered at me, _motherfuckin' cunt in a Lay-Z-Boy._

"Shee-it," I spat out the cropped side window, "I don't know. Fuckin' white, Bella as one of us, robes and shit like that."

"Bet she looked good like one of us," Em interjected.

I shoved my fist to his stomach, "Wrong answer, fuckwad."

He coughed. "What? She'll be hot as-"

I headlocked him and put his face up to the gear shift, _"Again, _wrong answer."

Meanwhile, Jizz was rollin' his toothpick, but he straightened as the back of Bago door opened with a cheap creak, "_Shhh, _they're listenin' in."

We switched lingo instantly with Jazz on point, "Ouyay onnagay oday erhay?"

_Of course I was, what the fuckin' fuck kind of question was that?_ "Oonsay asway eway etgay ackbay omehay, Otherbray."

_Oonsay asway eway etgay omehay, Iway asway onnagay avehay erhay allway overway ethay aceplay, utbay onway ymay acefay irstfay, eadspray ideway andway idinray' ymay onguetay ighhay._

Christ, why the hell was I thinkin' in this pig Latin?

"Itshay, Ellabay'say anslatintray."

I switched gears, both in language and in the Pink Whore's engine, "Y'all are just on a fishin' expedition."

Jazz intercepted, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

_Whatever._

"One incident should not tarnish his many years of distinguished public service."

I chuckled, "By public service, you mean all those drooling humans I killed?" breaking rank.

"He has taken full responsibility for his actions," Jazz juried.

"Yay, There was a lapse in judgment," Bubba agreed.

"I'm sure he can rise above this," Jizz quoted.

_One thing was risin' above, from my groin, and the only thing I wanted to service was Bella's pussy with my lips and dick._

_Now._

"The true test of character is how you handle adversity," Jazz rolled up a joint and aimed the glowing end at me.

Apparently Bubba had a headache comin' on from our po-liticial clichés, because he spoke succinctly, "Just goddamn tell us already, WTF's Up?"

"IDK, NGL," I muttered.

"Looks like you need to find out ASAP," Jizz pondered over the smoking roach.

"FU, I'm workin' on it."

Bubba took the proffered ember between his lips, "Yeah, you need to get the DL from your LTC PDQ, braw."

"As soon as we get to the DW, fucknut," I watched the speedometer splutter with my ever-pressing foot.

"Smoke it, shit for brains," Bubba retaliated.

"Not an acronym," I leaned back and inhaled deeply, "you lose, pud-whore."

"Trust," Jazz sent the flame of his Zippo up to another.

The chickies came out.

Bella was flushed and her tits were bigger than before, and I knew this because I had all her measurements locked inside my photographic pornographic memory.

_No way they were fuckin' around back there with the door closed. _

Were they? Well, maybe they were…_nah, no way._ Although, Bella was in a different outfit… back to some buttery yellowy sexy skirt and tank top

I tried to concentrate on the new lanes of 17 South, the speed limit had gone down for the fifth time in half as many years… but Bella stopped beside me and ruined my focus with her hand to my forearm, and then my bicep, to my throat.

Passin' through Jacksonboro, a roadside church flashed its sign:

_**Eternal salvation through body piercing**_

You don't say… _Jesus._

_~~ll~~_

It was half-past 'I needed to get laid', otherwise known as three-thirty a.m., when we pulled up to the DW after droppin' Bubba back at Rose's. I hurried Bella into the trailer and steered her right down the hallway.

She tried to hang back.

I pivoted, "What? Shouldn't we go to bed?"

"Why, you tired?"

_Yeah, tired of the feeling of my cock scratching against my zipper and tryin' to tear through my jeans… that's what I was tired of._

"Funny." I gave her a predatory grin. "If I don't get inside you soon, I am going to explode."

"Oh, _that_," she pressed her hand to my crotch, and I groaned at the shockingly good feeling of her palm gliding and her fingers tightening. Then she cupped my balls, and I moaned, "Ah!"

"Actually, I _am_ hungry."

_God yes._ _So was I, for snatch._

"For food, Eddie."

_Fuck, no._

Bein' a fuckin' gentleman really pissed me off at this precise moment, but instead of going straight for that golden _snatch_, I offered her a snack, and I didn't even make a licentious comment about how my cum could surely provide at least one of the four basic food groups and could solidly fill her up on proteins.

I found my fridge stocked fuckin' full of unrecognizable _things_. _Maw._ And… _score_, there was some fresh blood. I straight guzzled the MRE while I put a crumbly muffin type thing on a plate for Bella and poured her some of that sweet tea she liked.

She was staring at my own drink.

_Might as well test this whole 'Bella wants to be a vampire' thing out_, I figured. 'Want some?' I offered.

Bella wrinkled her nose up, "Uh, think I'll pass tonight."

_Hmmm._

I downed my ounces and grabbed another before joining her at the table.

"Can you pass me the Country Cock?" she was peeling the crinkled paper off her breakfast-food-stuff.

Good thing I'd finished my libations because I would have spat that shit out all over the place! _Finally… Hell Yeah!_ Country Cock was somethin' I knew all about.

I stood and started getting' _it_ out, unbuttoning my jeans with furious haste, poppin' off the pull-tab of the zipper so it pinged against the Frigidaire. Fool thing was throbbing so painfully, I had to hold it back with one hand to my huge swollen head and one at my base where my fingers didn't even reach all the way around, just so it wouldn't attack Bella of its own free will.

Bella was lookin' down as she cut her muffin in half with one hand and held the other palm out to me.

_Well, alright._ She could continue eatin' if she wanted… handjob would do me _fine._

Just as I was about to lay my rod on her outstretched hand, she glanced over, and her knife took another chip out of the 'china' as it dropped to the plate, "What are you doin'?"

"You said 'Country Cock'," _Jesus, I knew an invitation when I heard one, right? _

"No, I said _Country CROCK_. A butter-like spread… for my muffin."

_Her muffin? Spread? Wait, what? _I blustered, "BUTTER?"

She nodded.

"Okay, Bella, I'll fuckin' get you your Country Crock of Shit, and then you're gonna' take my goddamn Country Cock, we clear?"

_Nah, screw that, I was done. Fuckin' capital fuckin' 'D' Done._

"On second thought, I'm just gonna fuck you while you eat."

She choked on her what-the-fuck-ever it was, "Jesus, Eddie, that's uncouth, even for you!"

_Yeah? Good. Enough with this gallant bullshit; leave that crap to Carl, or Carlisle or whoever he used to be._

"Oh really?" I unsnapped my worn-out, chambray Wrangler shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulders and stripped it away, jetting it to the sink. My biceps flexed as I crossed my arms and damn fuckin' straight her eyes were fixated on my chest. I advanced slowly, "Well now, that's funny, because you're just as horny as me. Can _smell_ you, woman. And look at your nipples goddamn leaping up, just at the sight of me, _just at the sound of me_."

"So, you got two choices: you can either get them clothes off, or I can do it for you. And that'd be a shame because I for damn sure won't be takin' care with 'em, and those things—" _what were they anyway? A tanktop and a short, ruffly skirt? I wanted to know what she had on underneath "—_are yellow. _And you know how much I love you in yellow._"

On her feet, her _muffin _forgotten, Bella marched up to me, "Take 'em off me then."

I clenched my fists and inhaled. _Slow, I'd start slow._ I'd waited so long to be at her again. I fingered beneath the strap of her top and ran my fingers across the neckline. I followed with my mouth.

Then my tongue.

And back with my teeth ghosting above her flesh.

Bella swirled her hips against me.

Sliding the little bits of pretty lace down over her shoulders, I pulled the top over her tits with my thumbs hooked in and grazing her nipples.

"_Yes," _she exhaled.

And her breasts oscillated to my touch when I circled them.

Fingertips, mouth, teeth, sucking, pinching, biting.

Her hands were in my hair and on my chest and down my stomach and lost in the forest of my pubes just above my jutting cock.

Mumbling into her belly, I kissed, licked, caressed from that round divot to her back, right to those dimples of her spine. I lazily sliced through her top, leavin' it in dozens of cotton shreds that were streamers falling to the floor.

_All the things I wanted to do to her_.

Legs wrapped around my head, legs clasping my hips, tits holding my dick, my cock filling her mouth, my mouth between her thighs, my tongue sipping from her cunt, her heels burrowing into my ass and my dick fucking her solid…

I fanned my hands around her hips and slid them down, taking away the skirt. My fingers tucked into her sinewy sexy legs, over her knees, my hands covered her ankles and finished by lifting her feet free of the cloth.

Still behind her, on my knees, I palmed her damp panties.

I found her clit and pulsed against it.

Bella stamped, whined, _spread_ and hung her head to watch my hand.

I smacked her ass lightly then grabbed her panties and ripped them off with the perfect fuckin' sound of shredded fabric.

"Fuck!" she jumped then settled and braced her hands on the counter.

Unfolding her pussy, I pressed both my thumbs into her, painting my hand in her wetness, touching every frill, watching the chills run up the backs of legs and kissing my way up to the globes of her ass.

I nipped at her nape as I rose against her, my body over hers, fingers inside of her.

Our kisses were a heated savage thrust and parry until I pulled out of her, sucked her earthiness off of me, backed her to the fridge and held one of her endlessly gorgeous legs up.

Flushed and ready, all of her screaming out for all of me, Bella watched the way I held my cock against her. She brought her fingers to mine so we both wrapped around my shaft, her shine was on me, makin' my dick slippery and warm and so goddamn big.

I grabbed over her hand and slid it up and down, pounding a hand-sized print into the dusty blue metal of the humming refrigerator. Pressing and pistoning and teasing her pussy. Watching ripples shade down her tummy. Seeing her legs stretch and flex, her tits shimmy, her neck arch.

"Want it?" I growled, sucking into her throat and up to her ear.

Liquid streamed over our fingers because she was cumming with her eyes clamped tight, _"Yes!"_

"Want me?"

She blazed those irises open, and they were black as mine, "Yes, _now._"

I traced into her and out, testing.

"I'm gonna fuck you into oblivion."

I etched against her a few more times, dedicated to makin' her cream all over me even more.

Thick slick moisture came from both of us, and I wasn't even really fucking her yet.

With an almighty shout, I shoved up into Bella, raising her completely off the lino, leaning in and stretching her from top to bottom, in and out.

My dick tripled in size and her nipples flowered up to my mouth, and I sucked her as I fucked her wildly, lunging and yelling. Her clit dancing against my knuckles, her chest a rash from where I'd been licking, her body feasting and swelling, I penetrated her over and over again until the fridge door buckled and groaned, and I gripped her ass, holding her tight to me while I ground back and forth, "This right here," I pulled one of her nipples and her clit at the same time and rammed into Bella again to her scream. "Gonna do this all again," I grunted as my orgasm paralyzed me in a coil of snared muscle until it threw me over the edge with my yells flying out, "_Ahhh, FUCK!"_"

"_Fuck!"_

Panting and shivering and so very fucked, Bella fell against my chest.

I smoothed back her wicked tendrils from where they'd whipped me, raggedly mentioned, "You best recoup now, because in twenty minutes I'm gonna do this again, _with my tongue fucking you and my lips mouthing you and cock streaming over you and my teeth…"_

Bella heralded enough to comment, "Wanna get your teeth into me, do you?"

_Yeah, I did._

Two hours later, my bed was a mess, Bella was winding down from her umpteenth orgasm and I was blanketing her with my body. Because it was humid as hell, and I was so much a cooler then the whirring A/C unit propping up my window.

Curling her to me, I noted, "Well, you didn't call me Sire yet."

"_Mmmm._," Bella hummed.

"Or Sir," I pressed.

"I wasn't in the mood," she rolled over, presenting her back to me.

"Sure felt like you were."

"You didn't let me finish my breakfast, _and_ you promised me courtship and romance," Bella's voice was muffled by the pillow.

_Well, fuck that, I'd just wanted to get in her pants. _

"You still want that muffin?" I frowned down at the back of her head, willing her to look at me, to no avail.

Rolling to me, Bella pouted so suggestively I had to kiss her ripe mouth, "No, I want chocolate."

"Well, I'll get you chocolate then."

"I don't think you have any," she looked fuckin' heartbroken, like chocolate was gonna make everything all a-okay for her right now.

"Hell, darlin', if you want chocolate that's what you'll get. Take me bout five minutes to get to the Circle K and back," I rocked her back and forth.

"You'd do that?"

I gently kissed the tips of her fingers and hauled a wrinkled sheet back up over her, "Anything you want, Bella. You know that," I looked around for some clean clothes and came back to her, "I love you."

Her eyes unclouded, and she smiled. "You are so sweet, baby." Her mouth nuzzled in the area near where my heart might be, "I love you, too."

As I bounded off the porch, I heard her call out, "And salt 'n vinegar chips!"

_What? Gross. How was that even appetizing?_

As promised, I got her supplies and was back in five minutes.

After her repast, I licked the chocolate off her mouth—not too disgusting, mixed with her innate flavor-and laid her out… _again and again._

I decided it was enough when the sun was risin', the crickets were blaring and begging for my boot to their tiny little rubbing legs to mash them into the ground… and the mockingbirds? I'd have to bazooka those feathered foes to get them to halt their squawking.

_But I still wasn't done._

My cock was fueled and ready to go, _aching_ to stay where it was, to get in a few more fucks.

"Yes," Bella smiled into my chest.

"What?"

"You can stay in me," her lids were droopy.

"Really?"

"Anything you want, Eddie…_you know that…"_

_~~ll~~_

The morning, or more like the afternoon by the time Bella woke, was interestin'.

She was alternately insatiably horny as me, which meant a whole lotta fuckin' all over the DW and even outside against the lone live oak. The entire homestead smelled like sex, and I liked that, a lot.

_That_ got me strutting proud.

Hell, she fucked _me _inside out. But, I was little bit confused by her unusual whining and ranting and raving and pacing and… _what the fuck was up with all the chocolate and chips? Had she caught The Munchies from Carl?_

And I didn't like _that._

_And then… _there was the whole vampire bullhockey. Or… _Jesus… _nuptials?

So the more she was eerily calm or hotly fucking me or just a plain ol' she-devil, I was growin' increasingly perplexed.

Her, 'I'm Fine," routine, her_ quiet riot _mind blockage was gettin' past its sell-by-date.

I needed to know her decision on any number of things, but she was all hell-cat one minute and a goddess of serenity the next.

_What was she waitin' for? A proposal of marriage instead of my promise to make her undead forever?_

I kept my mouth shut, unless it was on top of her tits... because I knew which side my bread was buttered on.

The early news was on and Bella was slung under my arm, eating another nasty concoction.

She was oblivious to the fact I was chasin' my tail trying to figger out what she was thinking.

There on the 'Live Five' news was an announcement that had me sittin' back and tryin' not to laugh: 'The Luxury Hollows Property Owners Association has voted in that all dogs must be kept on a leash.'

_Righteous._

As a little addendum, they rounded out that kibble bit with: "South Carolina is the sixth largest state for dog fighting.'

_Well, no wonder. The Rambunctious Rottweilers had made this their home, _I let out a chuckle.

Bella slapped my arm.

The phone rang.

I was ready to go at it again.

She was not, I guessed.

I continued laughing all the way to the kitchen and then held the receiver—_Ha, like a Golden Retriever—_as far away as the snarled cord would allow.

I knew them dogs had keen hearing, but this was beyond even my understanding. Leah musta known we were talkin' about her kind.

"Uh, it's for you," I jangled it to Bella, the screeching still piercing my ears.

Alpha Bitch was on the line.

"Hey," Bella cradled the phone.

I went back to the living room, but only because I didn't need to be close to listen in.

"Uh huh."

"No, we're good."

"Yes."

"_YES, he's still pretty."_ She sighed.

I felt a little bit smug. And swaggered into the kitchen.

Bella scowled at me, and I slunk back out.

"_Yeah I did_, you know it."

_Shit, my cock understood what she was talkin' about…no translation needed. _

Bella faced the far corner and whispered, "I don't know."

"_Yes, I met her._"

"There are two ways."

She glared at the phone then shouldered it again, "No, _yes._ Uh huh. _Of course._ Only you, yeah. Well, Rose too."

_What?_

"Yeah, yeah, _okay already_."

"Yes."

"_Whatever_… sure, uh-huh. _Okay, _Leah. I totally swear that when it happens you'll be by my side.,. Made of Horror—_I mean, _Maid of Honor and all that stuff."

_WHAT?_

_~~ll~~_

"Well, this is the best way to germinate your seeds," Esme was bent over a flower border constructed of a brand-new-old casket with Charlie beside her, drinkin' loosely from his PBR.

"I don't know much about cultivatin'," the man stared with interest as seedlings were bedded down to their first life in a bucket full of death.

Bella had said we needed to check in on her Dad at the Bluff.

And there he was, gettin' a schoolin' in mulching.

I had Bella against me as we approached the pair, both of us a little bit weirded out.

"Oh hey, Bella… _Edward,_" Charlie tossed up like the soil Maw was turning over.

_And very many Fuck Yous to you, too, Constable Cunt._

"How was the fishing?" Bella asked.

The curled ends of his mustache curved up, "Got me a nine and a half incher."

_Well, fancy that, so did I._

"And Mama's?" I kissed M'Esme's cheek.

"Oh yes, she's such a blessed woman, that Mama Brown. Has her the foresight like our Alice, she does," Maw hugged me close, "and she thinks mighty highly of all you kids."

Bella jogged up the steps of the house with her Dadd-… _with her father, _in tow to collect his bags_._

"'S'on your mind, Son?" Maw watched me watch after Bella with a frown beetling my eyebrows.

I shuffled awkwardly and then put it out there, "I don't know what's wrong with her right now."

"Oh!" Esme scanned the area to make sure no one was over-listenin'. "She bein' a bit… aggressive?"

I agreed.

M'Emse guided me down the path, away from the house.

"Wants to have a lot of 'the relations'?" I guessed air quoting ran in the family.

I assumed she meant fucking all over the place, so I nodded.

"Cravin' things?"

"Yeah!"

"She's comin' up to her monthlies."

_Oh. Those. _

"Now don't you worry, all you have to do is agree with her… whatever she says," Maw pulled out a few more weeds and squinted to me, "And tell her I took the liberty of buying a supply of feminine hygiene products for your trailer."

In an instant, she was back to the usual ass-whuppin' , "You prepared for her menstruatin'?"

"What?" I grimaced in disbelief. "It's not like I'm gonna get crazy and bite her or anything," _too hard._

Not until she was ready, anyway.

"Give me some credit for havin' the willpower to beat away the impulse to taste her_,_" I defended myself.

We'd wandered up the alley, lacey with oaks and southern pines. "You know, Bubba told me," Maw hinted.

"Told you wha-" I stopped myself; she had that certain gleam in her eyes.

The one she got when she was thinkin' about wedding cakes and seatin' arrangements.

Of-fuckin' course he'd told her, the gossip-mongering hen-_Pecker._

She rubbed her hands together and that gleam went from wistful to full-on matrimonial maniacal, "I do so love a weddin'!"

Of course, as fate would have it, we'd stopped right next to the old joggling board. A common enough seating piece found outside of the lowcountry's plantations in the 1800s—right around when Jazz had bit the mortal dust, there weren't many of these relics left. Kinda like us. How many times had I heard Maw wishing back on that old sayin', _'There was never an unmarried daughter at a house that had a joggling board'._

_Shit._

All she wanted was her boys paired off, matched up. And she'd always wanted a girl.

"Yeah, I don't think that's in the cards, Mom," I looked down at the butterscotch cap of her hair.

There was no doubt in her eyes, like she'd spent so much time with Mama Brown recently 'the seeing' had worked into her, "Don't you give up hope, Eddie."

Indulgently, I smiled, and hugged her to me as we headed back to the house. _I had hope alright…just not for what everyone else seemed to think was all right and proper. _

Bella came out. Charlie had his knapsack.

I followed him to the Cruiser as Bella hung back.

I saw him off with the briefest words while he checked his scanner and fingered the safety of his weapon, his mustache twitching downward as if it had a mind of its own.

When I got back down the drive, Esme and Bella were… _hula hooping?_

"What are ya' doing?" Just in case _mine eyes deceiveth me_.

"These are weighted, good for a cardio workout," Maw enlightened me, _because she really needed to do aerobics… for her heart._

Bella huffed up her hair, "I'm just blowing off some steam."

"I got better ways to accomplish that, Bella."

"Let's see you try it," Bella swooped the hoop down her hips and threw it at me.

I captured the fucker and chucked it way over her head and sent it flying like a Frisbee into the forest, felling a fair few trees in the process. I silently dared Maw to lecture me on cutting down _good wood_—I had me some good wood and it wanted to cut up into Bella.

Maw just narrowed her eyes and gave me her 'I'll-deal-with-you-later, Boy' patented look.

Just as well too because there was a joggling board set up behind the house that needed initiatin**'.**

Bella admonished, "I meant 'try to hula hoop'."

Deliberately obtuse, I shrugged, "Assumed you meant show you a better way to let off some frustration, darlin'."

Once I had Bella next to the sixteen-foot-long, glossy black, sway-backed board, I stripped her bare and opened my jeans. I centered her back on the wooden plank, watched her arch up towards me.

She giggled and moaned when I plunged down into her, the board boinging vigorously, "This is a little bit precarious, baby…_ahhhh shit_."

"Won't let you fall," I grunted, using my broad chest to keep her in place as I shoved into her.

When Bella's nails scored down my ass, I reared back and blasted her insides with my cum.

Every move had her tits jumpin'.

The board skipped up and down with our fucking.

Bella laughed really loudly when her hips were jerked up into mine by the perpetual motion, and I grinned just as I released a second time and then the silence blew about us, caught in climax.

Straining, cracking, bending… _bellowing._

Cracking up and bursting with gasps of laughter when the joggling bench splintered dead in the middle, depositing us in a dusty, muggy, messed-up, sexed-up heap on the ground.

"I'm orderin' one of these things for the DW right quick," I decided.

"Better make it an even dozen, baby," Bella looked over the debris surrounding us.

_She had a point._

_~~ll~~_

Now that I thought about it, maybe a ring was the way to go, mark her as mine. No, she could take that shit off. _A tattoo_. Yeah that was a much better way to go, this was permanent. I'd like to see my name, maybe '_I'm Eddie's'_ right down somewhere near her pussy. But then I wouldn't want anyone else seein' _that_ area of Bella's body. _What a friggin' palaver_…I just needed to get back to what I knew… turning Bella…

I was all turned around and turned on. And I knew we were just wasting time, but that was somethin' I excelled at.

We'd just finished another round that had Bella at my feet with my cock in her mouth, and her eyes watching each turn of my body as I saw her lips slicking over me.

"That's so goddamn sexy," I panted.

"Your mouth on me, your tongue…"

Bella slurped me out and ran her tongue over my head, catching all the thick drips sliding down my shaft, "Know what's sexy?"

I dipped back into her mouth, moaning, "_No._"

She nuzzled down to my balls, bringing them to her heated mouth, "The way you look at me while you fuck my mouth."

"_Christ-Goddamn!"_ I shot a motherload down her throat, rimming her lips first with my cum and then loving the hell out of her when she opened wide for the rest of my feast.

I was still holding onto the back of her head as the screen door screeched and Bubba wheeled in.

Propelling Bella behind me, I shook off my dick and covered up, wiping her saliva and my toxin-cum off with my shirt.

"Hey, Braw, Skeet N Eat at Turkey Pond Rifle Range tonight!" he was cooked up like a turkey in a fat fryer himself, "Oh, hey, Bella… lookin' good."

She'd draped the afghan around herself.

"Back off," I warned.

"What? Look at her. Her cups runneth over," Em was diggin' his own grave.

I tucked the blanket up around Bella's neck like a bib and asked her to go get dressed.

"Shut the fuck up or I'm gonna runneth you over with my fists," I turned back to Bubba.

"C'mon, anyone can tell she's getting ready to rag it."

_And I was gettin' ready to rage it._

"Be that as it may, keep your fuckin' eyes off'n her." I bit out.

He started to get all emotional, just like Bella was actin', tearing up—as if he could—and _pouting_, _wheedling, _"No need to be so harsh… you got any of that Midol? I think I'm feeling some water weight gain."

_What the fu-_

"Everyone knows when you live in close proximity with a woman your cycles converge," he further explained, all weepy and shit.

"Well, _news flash_, YOU AIN'T A BROAD, Braw!" I hollered.

"Whatever," Bubba recovered. "You know, Eddie, that Skeet N Eat's a great place for weddin' receptions… even got a gazebo and caterers and shit."

"Get the fuck-"

His parting shot bounded back, "The Good Book has a proverb for everything, even PMS, 'Mary rode Joseph's ass all the way to Bethlehem.'"

_Ass. Hole. _

_Yeah, I was pretty much au the courant with this PMS shit by now._

It felt like a year with Bella bein' ornery and outta sorts, but it had only been less than a week.

Tylenol, tender tits, tampons… _and more chocolate._

In my opinion, this was just one more reason to change her.

I went to the back of the trailer and found her holding a box of cottony winged things, "Have a happy period? _Have a happy period these things say!_"

"_Uh_-"

"Fucking _idiots_," Bella shoved the brightly colored _happy_ box back under my sink.

"My boobs hurt," she cupped them in her arms and looked at me.

"Let me hold you for a bit, darlin'," I started for her but she backed up.

"No, you'll just want to fuck 'em again," she looked at her swollen boobs and, _we-ell_, I couldn't argue with that.

"No Skeet N Eat tonight?" she soldiered out of the bathroom and banged open the door of my bedroom.

I followed, rubbing a hand down my chest, and one to my hair, "So, how long does this PMS thing last?"

Bella stopped rummaging through my drawers, "What did you just say?"

"You know, because… hell, I'm lovin' that it's got you all hot and bothered but… _shit_, at least if you were a vampire I wouldn't have to deal with these hormonal mood swings of yours."

Bella was tight lipped and cold eyed as she asked again, "Why don't you want to go to Skeet N Eat tonight, _baby_?"

I had the sudden sense I'd just stepped into a big heap of shit, "_Um_, well to be perfectly fuckin' honest, I don't think I trust you with a firearm right now," I mumbled, _"You're likely to cap my ass._"

She went back into my top drawer… and came out with my handgun.

_Fuck, this could be really, really bad._

She unsnipped the safety and checked the chamber, which was fully loaded.

_Christ in Heaven._

Her hands were steady as her cool brown glare when she raised the weapon and unloaded a shot at my shoulder.

The fucker stung like a bitch, made me briefly recoil before the bullet ricocheted off my impenetrable flesh and buried itself in the closet door.

Her whole face was covered in shock, and I'm fucking sure mine was too, because she asked, "What? That's not supposed to hurt, is it? I mean, you're indestructible, right?"

"You just _fucking shot me, Bella!_" I raised my voice and my finger. Fierce and hot and a little bit put-out, I hollered, "And yeah, it friggin' smarts."

Her bravado quickly leached out of her expression as she pushed me down onto the bed and quickly lifted up my shirt-sleeve, whispering a litany of, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking," _well, no shit._ Running her fingers up and down my unblemished skin, she sagged with relief against me, "It's all this crap… I can save you—_I'd never hurt you,"_ _Coulda fooled me just now._ "And I have to become a vampire, which don't get me wrong, there are definitely some perks to that, especially that I'll be able to have you forever, but I'm just not sure about you know, _dying_ and things like drinking blood because you know I like my sweet tea… and then there's this whole wedding thing and that just gives me the huge heebies jeebies, especially when Maw starts goin' on about color schemes and stuff and-

"Listen, Eddie, it's not gonna' happen," she traced her fingers down from my forehead to my jaw, clinging to the sharp edge that squared off below my ear.

"It ain't?" I tried to see her eyes, but she kept them downcast.

"Well, not _that_ anyway," she sort of softly snorted.

_Okay, what were we talkin' about here: the knot tying thing __or the turning thing?_

"Yeah, so I've made a decision on the other topic though," her pretty mouth lifted in a slight smile.

Trying to figure out what the hell she was goin' on about without actually coppin' to the fact I didn't have the slightest goddamn inkling, I asked, "You sure?"

"Yes. Why? You worried I'll be stronger than you?"

_Alright, now this smelled like vampire._ Or…domestic violence? And I think I'd just had a good taste of that.

I kissed her widow's peak gently, "I know you will be, you already are."

"Anxious about that crazy, unstable, newborn insanity?"

A whisper of hope bloomed inside of me, makin' me grin like an imbecile_…because she couldn't be talkin' about babies, right? _She had my medical records and damn well knew I was sterile.

Risking more gunfire, I rushed ahead, "Well, you haven't exactly been a picnic these past few days…"

"I'm just gonna let that one slide," Bella put her thumb to my mouth. "What about feeding off humans?"

_Fucking Bingo!_ Hope was now shooting through me, rather like a huge spray of buckshot exploding me from the inside out, and my voice grew low and rough with the relief I was holding in, "I think you'd find y'all are purty tasty," Bella did that nose wrinkle thing, "but I wouldn't never let it come to that," I promised.

I wanted to hoot and holler, do a victory dance, have a kegger and invite all the neighbors-except for that new lady, Genny, because I just couldn't listen to one more of her 'I'm gettin' The Menopause' stories—I wanted to screw Bella silly, until even I couldn't walk straight—_well, I couldn't already, what with the permanent stiff one I was hauling around between my thighs_—I just wanted to make sure… _first…_

"Maybe you should wait, Bella, what with your doings bein' out of whack and all."

She pulled back, "That's strike two, care to go for three?" I shook my head and tried not to smirk at her. "It's not the Dark Ages, baby, I'm fully capable of making a reasonable and rational decision even when I have PMS."

_Yeah, because she's been soooo reasonable and rational recently, and how come she could mention the P-word but not me?_

Suddenly, Bella was not only just in my arms, she was all over me, pulling up my shirt and unbucklin' my belt and making out with her open mouth to the tensing muscles of my stomach. "You happy now?" she slid her teeth back and forth over the padded sinews of my ribs.

"Yeah, _Christ Fuckin' Hell, _yes, Bella," I declared then gave into a loud rolling growl that worked itself up from my chest when her floral aroma, her womanly musky scent slammed me sideways.

_Mate_

_Feed_

_Fuck_

_Have…_

…Marry?

_Nah._

"Well, I guess we better go tell my dad later," Bella came up to my lips.

_On second thought…_

_

* * *

_

~Well, Eddie is both _fine_ and F.I.N.E. Won't you please review, I will love it so very much!~

So, Eddie and me were interviewed by Indie TLC over at FanFicAholics Anon this month; the link is on my profile as well as the link for the latest Dead Confederates trailer made by the gorgeous RMCC. Just a little (HUGE!) somethin' sexy she and Indie cooked up called, _Confessions of a Southern God _(just, don't tell Eddie that, it'll go to his…_head_).

Hey, and thanks whoever nommed/voted for me/Eddie for the Fandom People Awards! We got a ton of honorable mentions and the Most Likely to Reply to Reviews award!

As ever, absolutely fucking all of that and more, more, more is on the blog.

**Blog: **deadconfeds . wordpress . com

**Vid: **youtube . com/watch?v=72qlQq6TGbw&list=ULtVB5XZ6C8aM\

**Interview: **http :/ fanficaholics. blogspot . com/2010/11/dead-confederates . html?zx=fa0619e3d5ccc463

And don't forget to read Rebelward Without a Cause…

Eddie: Gobble gobble, fuck 'til you hobble.

Rie: I think what he means is, Happy Thanksgiving to y'all Americans out there, and tie one on (as we're sure you will) to the rest of you lovely ladies.

Cheers~


	29. Signs

My complete fucking adoration and unrivaled love to both of my wonderfully talented betas: Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta. I'd be 100% off-my-rocker without them…as it is I'm only 95% insane.

**Message from y'all's sponsor (me) about **_**Rebelward Without a Cause**_** outtakes: **You simply MUST read them, seriously! If you aren't, then you're missing giant chunks of the DC's story. 'Then why are they outtakes,' you ask? Because they are mainly from different character POV's (although Eddie shows his…_head_ too), which means there's info from those people (Caius, Mama Brown, M'Esme, Alice etc.) about what's gone down, _who's goin' down_, and WTF might be getting' ready to throwdown. The most recent was written by the brilliant winterstale about our Bayou shapeshifter Paul, introducing a couple new, vital DC characters. The next will feature something terrifyingly eerie, written by me.

~~Let's not beat around the…_err_…bush ;). NSFWhatever~~

_Signs_, Tesla

www . youtube . com / watch?v=r0tu_4Y_b_w

* * *

**Signs**

_**~~Keep your words soft and sweet. You never know when you might have to eat them~~ **_

"So that's a yes then?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yes, Eddie. Chelsea cleared things up for me."

"This has to be your decision."

"And it is, completely, baby. It's either sit back and let y'all get slaughtered, or step in. Give you what you want, and what _they_ want. What will save you."

I rolled to my back and fisted my eyes, because biting through the hubris that was forming inside of me was the unlikely need for Bella to _want this like I did_, "That does _not_ sound like a choice."

With her hand gripping my upper arm, Bella moved over me, her body just lush as fuckin' hell, her lips at my throat and then my mouth, then my ear, "Maybe I'm not makin' myself clear here. Look at me."

I peered at her from behind my hands, the motion made my biceps pump under her fingers.

"I love you, Eddie Cullen. I want you to live… _or be dead forever or whatever._" I chuckled slightly. "_I_ want to be with you as your woman and your mate and your… _I'm going to be like you._ And you're going to do me."

_Do her?_ Well, yeah, that wasn't even a question. Over and over, until the sun was extinguished from the sky in its final deathbed.

_Make her, mark her, turn her._

Folding her against, my arms doubling over her slim back, trailing down her sensual curves, fitting in at her narrow waist, "Bella, I don't want-"

Her fingertip silenced me, "You _do want._"

"Yeah," I agreed, "But just because I'm a selfish bastard don't mean you should just-"

"Eddie Cullen, just shut the hell up right now!" she blazed. "I've decided. This is what we both want. And you're goddamn goin' to make me a vampire, got it?" In her fiery ire, her body heated more and more, her tits bounced and her cunt became wet and I was turned on, my face stern with want. "Need I remind you what I'm capable of, when I'm tee'd off and sufferin' from PMS?"

Absentmindedly, I rubbed my shoulder, where she'd friggin' shot me. I could still smell gunpowder in the room. "Errr, no ma'am." _Shit, this reminded me of what Bubba was like with Rose. _Pussy. Whipped.

_Fuck. _Again_._

"Good," Bella _kenneled down_. She caressed my chest and stopped over the left side, "You hush up now. Why you gotta be so obstinate? I'm givin' you what you've desired since the first time you saw me."

"You… _huh?_" I was flabbergasted, and totally turned on because her body was arched to mine, and she was naked and so was I, and my cock just fit so well inside of her that right now it stretched and strained and pulsed to get closer than where it rested, full and heavy, across her hip.

"Oh, don't think I didn't know… You wanted to fuck me." _Couldn't deny that._ "And leave me." _Uh… _I started shakin' my head. "Which you did, I might add, a coupla' times." _True._ "Then you told me you wanted to _suck my blud._" _Okay, she was really bad at the Bela Lugosi impersonation… or maybe she was channeling Gary Oldman in__the latest Dragoule. Still sucked though. I mean the movie, and Bella's mimicry._ _And often her plush lips on my dick, although not at that precise moment, un-fuckin'-fortunately. _ "And then you fell in love with me." Bella smiled. Shit, and her smile was warmer than the lowcountry sun on a day when even the anoles laid low under cool cement steps because it was too damn hot. _Yeah._ "And you wanted to make me yours," she wasted no time puttin' my Pavlov prick out of its misery, easing onto her back, winding her arms around my neck, suckin' on my nipples, and guiding my dick back into her deep, sweet, sweltering delta.

_Fuckin' Christ on an airboat!_ A toxic thrill raged inside me, meltin' away my most fuckin' faint gentlemanly impulses to make way for sin, and wickedness.

_Yes, fuck yes._

I slammed into Bella fast, and slid out all the way, slow… slow, _slow_… until my head—the one with a brain, even though my other one did most of my thinkin' for me—yearned up to her neck, and my cock slapped back outside of her belly.

_Panting._

I raised my thumb and licked it. Put the pad into Bella's mouth so she bit down on it as much as she could, which was enough to send another shot of venom up my straining cock.

Lowering over her nipple, I watched her irises bloom like monkshood, saw her peak elongate and her skin pebble with chills even though I didn't touch her.

"_Eddie."_

"Yeah?"

Lower, I called goosebumps from her tummy. _Lower_ I brushed my knuckles over her mons. _Lower, _I circled her clit with my thumb, adhering her wetness all around my fingers so when I shoved them fast inside there wasn't any resistance, just swells and crests and Bella bowed up, locked tight in an orgasm that cuffed me inside of her.

Her fingers stilled my wet ones and her mouth begged me up, and her push brought me inside so I more than filled her with a frown, a _'Fuuuck!'_, a grunt and shove and our bodies slapping.

Our tongues teased and reached and strived.

Enveloping her waist in my knife-sharp fingers, I closed my eyes and listened to her sing as I swung in and out.

_Moans tripled like chants in round. _

Her quivering cunt clamped and released. Bella's mouth met mine, tugged and nibbled and craved down my throat.

I lifted her legs and bent them to her boobs, her knees striking her nipples every time I slammed into her.

I tracked down her body with my open mouth and racked into her again and again until the bed shifted to make a fuckin' huge dent in the wall.

Flakes and plaster, spit and kisses, cream and venom.

I pounded the wall, pounded into Bella, held her onto her shoulders to remind myself I didn't want to harm her.

I pursed my lips, bit into my inner cheeks as I jerked thick, icy, poisonous streams into her chalice to her cry of, _"Oh my… uuuh, Gah-damn… GOD, yes, Eddie-God-Mother-fu-… yeeeeeaaaaas."_

I didn't know about her, but I was goddamn brained.

Cum and fuck and heat and scents were all over us.

My shitty A/C window unit whined on.

Bella handled my ass, massaging the muscles, "_So good._"

I flipped her over and tucked my hands in their restin' place: one between her tits, and one inside her thighs. My dick at her ass.

_Usual._

Even though I'd nailed her hard, she weren't ready for sleep yet. _No, 'course not._

My voice held a coarse timbre as I questioned her restlessness, "What?"

"I want you, too, baby. I want to be with you as long as you're on this Earth." Bella snuck up higher, her hands about my face and in my hair and, "_and_ I will kill anything or anyone who comes between us."

"That's my job," I feared for Bella. My cheeks caved in from the been-fucked-fully smirk, my heart stopped, my hands clawed with the urge to make her safe.

Bella slithered to me, a leg between mine, turnin' my thoughts on end, and breezily she sanctioned, "And it will be…_your job._ You'll kill them all, _just not right now. _Let me do my part."

I came at her again, nuzzling her breasts and beatin' in and out of her, "Just so we're clear here, _I'm in charge_."

I thrust, and she took both her hands around my dick, feelin' up and out the inches of me that fit inside her, her dusty tone left off with a laugh I fucked out of her, "'Course you are." Bella grabbed the edges of the mattress and gyrated into me, slicked over my muscles and hasped my ass; she came so explosively I had to hold her head up before she concussed herself against the huge concave hole in the wall I'd caused with round one.

Her thighs splayed, her tits still tossing in the throes of her orgasm, I took advantage of her open invite. Quickly, I threw her back and masturbated on top of her, coating her cleavage with ropes of my seed, grunting, craning, completely insane.

She lassoed each cursive coil, letting them splash through her fingers then took me in hand to get the rest out of me.

Dazed and utterly fucked, I fell on top of Bella, only to cotton on to her last sleepy edict, _"So glad you're in charge, because you get to tell my dad."_

What. The. Fuck?

_**~~Trespassers will be baptized, by fire~~**_

Damn fuckin' dog days of summer.

Felt like Joo-ly would never end.

Ides of March? Fuck that… I had a deep-in-my-gut feelin' the shit was gonna hit the fan in August.

We were in my Sunday Best truck. I was in my old jeans that hung half off my hips. Wearin' a t-shirt that clung to my shoulders and with mess of a hair holdin' its own quarrel, I beat up the cold air but Bella was still hot. Her skirt was raised over her thighs, her knees spread, her flip-flops on the mat and her right foot out the window. I'm pretty sure the Mellow Buttercup Icecream asshole in the diesel idlin' next to us got him a good money shot, too.

I growled and curled my fingers over Bella's far ankle, placed it down on the seat, affordin' myself the pussy painting that had me panting and lickin' my lips. _Fuckin' white scraps of fine lace that did nothin' to hide her pretty nest of hair that arrowed down to sweet, succulent lips._

Clearin' my throat and hitting the gas, I asked, "Where's your pencil at?"

As if too lazy with the heat to answer me proper, Bella popped out the pencil she always had hooked behind her ear in case she needed to sketch some roadkill or other for future taxidermy masterpieces.

Amassing the perfumed haze of her long wavy hair in one hand, sliding the pencil from between my lips, I fashioned a makeshift sort of bun at the back of her head and rested my palm along her neck, sendin' a little Jack-off Frost her way.

"_MMmmm,_" she relaxed and turned to me, pushin' her arms around my waist and settling her face to my chest.

"Better?"

"Yeah," she sighed.

On the ride to Stake-Out-Swan's, I figgered I better keep my eyes on the road instead of between her filly-like legs. Seein' as how I was certain my cum on her tits wouldn't make much of a homecoming.

And especially not before we did the deed. _The other deed. _Not the one I really wanted…with me, between her knees.

Bella hot-footed it up to the second floor bathroom leaving me trottin' back and forth across the lint-ridden carpet.

Sheriff of Nuthin'-hood pronounced, settin' aside a skunked Cribbage board he'd been lookin' at as if some unseen visitors had just left, "Well, this here is awkward."

"Yep."

Leastwise he broke out his back-of-lounge chair cooler and tossed me a cold one. _Ahhh, beer, the great equalizer._

We tugged back on our longnecks at the same time. We each set them on the smudged, water-ringed coffee table… _at the same time._

I rubbed my palms over my thighs.

He ran his thumb under his fuckin' ridiculous Magnum P.I. mustache.

Finally, when the silence that hung heavy and stiff like oilcloth got to be too much, we both bellowed, "BELLA!"… _at the same damn time_.

There was the slap of her bare feet on the stairs and then her appearance in the arched openin' of the living room. In nothin' but a goddamn towel. A fucking old, threadbare one at that.

_Well that just weren't fair._

I swallowed my growl and let out a deep noise-some kind of combo between a hiss and a purr because I wanted to rip that loosely-knotted towel off her and kiss all down her body and back up again, makin' sure to concentrate at her hips, the curvature of her waist, the snugness underneath her creamy tits… but I couldn't do that, could I?

_No_, because her _dad_ was right there across from me, glaring and fingering his firearm in such a way I wondered if he was gonna do a Bella and give me a good crack, too.

"Well?" she stomped her foot and raised her palms and eyebrows.

I concentrated on the floor.

Charlie shifted around in his seat.

We remained mum.

"_Aaaah_!" Bella stormed back upstairs with her voice spitting down at us, "Can't a girl trust her boyfriend and her father to be able to carry on a civil…"

_Et fuckin' cetera. _I thought.

_Yadda yadda yadda,_ the Cuntstable rolled his eyes. Then he spoke, "So… PMS, huh?"

I sagged down on the couch, "That obvious?"

"You'll get used to it," he shrugged.

I carried on our 'civil' little conversation with, "Reckon I won't have to."

And of course, that was the end of that.

He was no longer just fingerin' his pistol, he was getting' ready to unholster it as he sat to attention and set down his half-drunk beer, aimin' at me with a finger and firing with a cold, calm voice, "But she ain't pregnant."

"No." I put some distance between us and confessed, "And I'm not here to ask for her hand in marriage, either."

"BELLA!" Charlie boomed, and I talked right over him, givin' sway to my inner ramblings, "I mean… _Hell_, Sir, I'm not exactly marriage material am I? Although, I ain't getting' any younger-"

"Or older," he tacked on.

"Yeah so, I was wonderin' if you'd mind terribly if I made Bella a vampire," I hadn't registered a thing he'd said after he'd called for Bella again, but now I shut the fuck up and wished I could stuff my words back in my mouth.

"Jesus Christ, you know… you're really not good at breakin' the news." The un-PC P.C. kicked up the footrest of his lounger and folded his hands behind his head, "Good goddamn thing I already worked out that you're not just a regular good-for-nothin' hick, or you'd like to be givin' me CPR right now."

_Or not_, I thought.

_Oh wait…_ "You knew?"

It was my turn, I opened my mouth to shout for her, but she was standing beside me, gapin' at her dad, "You knew?"

_Weren't we just a pair of imbeciles?_

Inspector Clued-so jumped up out of his seat and started pacing agitatedly. I moved slowly away from Bella as the In-the-know-interrogator got all chitlin'-eyed on me… I was now one hundred percent fuckin' sure he was gonna take a potshot at me—care of his mind, where he was already releasin' the safety from his pistol-and I didn't want her anywhere near me when Pops plugged me.

"Now, I know y'all don't think I'm thicker than a plank, right?"

I couldn't make out if that was a double negative or not, and because it sounded like a trap, I agreed warily.

"Now, way back in the nineties—that's _nineteen _nineties to you, _Son_—I happened across some crazy stuff," Charlie took his handgun up and checked his aim. Satisfied, he dropped his arm to the side. "There was this woman named Irina, and a young lady called Rose."

Bella and I had known he'd seen what had happened that night Billy Black, _The Dogfather_, had caught wind of those two, but we sure as fuck hadn't imagined he'd known what they were.

Leanin' his forearms to the back of his old couch that puffed up with filling in all the places he'd sat over all these years, Charlie shook his head, "That Irina ran off. Left Rose alone. _Damn pity._"

He loosened the first of the buttons on his tan, standard-issue shirt and ran his finger under the collar of his t-shirt as if he was uncomfortable in his own skin, "That girl was took under Mama Brown's wings, so that was that. No one messes on Mama Brown's patch."

"All these years before you folk showed up, _Eddie_, I kept an eye Rose and wedged myself between her and Billy's bayou pack… _I made sure to muzzle 'em._"

_Fuckin' Hell._

"Yeah, I've known all along, 'bout Rose." He squinted over at me, "But I didn't get y'all pegged until after she took up with your Bubba. Just thought you all were another ragtag redneck family."

From inside the archway, Bella agreed, "I know, me too!"

"Vampire then."

I nodded and kept my mouth shut this time.

"And you want to make my Bella one too?"

_Technically_, she was _my_ Bella, but I didn't think he'd appreciate me pointin' that out, so I followed up with yet another mute assent of my head.

Completely unruffled, Daddy-Oh-Hell-No tightened his grip on his weapon.

"_Don't!" _Bella shouted. Her eyes wide with alarm.

"Why not, can't hurt him, right?"

_Seemed their sense of logic ran in the family._

"Well, not really…I already tried it so-" Bella ground to a halt.

"'Atta girl. You already clock him with your glock?" Sheriff No-Shit positively fuckin' beamed at his little angel… _who was prone to random acts of domestic violence, when she had the PMS_.

"Uh, no. I used his-"

"Smith and Wesson," I helpfully supplied.

Charlie sidestepped her, "You know I wish you wouldn't use other people's weapons; you never know where they've been."

I about choked on my liquid lunch, _right, because usin' your lover's gun was a no-no, but becomin' a vampire…?_ Well, that was yet to be decided, "Like she's gonna catch an STD from it?"

His thoughts were _'Don't be dim, Boy'_, "_No_. Because she might be implicated in a crime."

Now, I took offense to that, as I was an upstandin' citizen who only occasionally threatened the lives of the general populace, "Well, first… everyone knows crime don't pay-"

"Except for Alice," Bella interjected.

"Yeah," I agreed. "And second…"

Woodchuck-Chuck chuckled, "Drawin' a _blank_?" as he watched a shaft of sun gleam down the barrel of his gun.

Private Dickhead continued to goad me, "_And second?"_

"Aw, fuck it." I opened my palms and my body, my flesh and chest to whatever he wanted to do to me, "Just shoot me already."

Bella started hurtlin' towards me but I pinned her back with my stare.

Until Charlie took his aim just a touch too low, and in the center, o_f my groin_.

Cupping my nutsack, I growled, "Oh hell no."

She stepped right up then, and fuck if I was gonna stop her this time, "_DAD!_ Higher! I'm partial to that piece of him."

The cop cursed as Bella all but copped a feel in front of him, "_Christ."_

"It's gonna hurt him no matter where you do it," she brushed her hands away from my cock, which, despite the fact I was about to get shot, didn't seem at all worried as it spread to full erection.

Looking a might bit too pleased at that pronouncement, he narrowed his sights, "Does it now."

After forcing Bella away, I held my prone stance. We both waited until she ducked just around the doorway with a final, "Please, Dad, _don't_."

Charlie faced me, his brown irises surfing with a sudden wetness he wouldn't let spill over, "You going to take my girl away from me?"

"No sir," I kept firm and steady, ready to receive a bullet in my crucifixion posture. _Always came back to God and guns._ "I'm going to make sure she's safe. _And that she'll live until the world ends."_

"Good answer." He locked on me and prepared to unload, all steely eyed now, "I still hope this hurts a bit."

The crack of the pistol whizzed before me and I didn't flinch. The fucker hit me half an inch down from Bella's wound. It reflected off my skin and blew off to the side, penetratin' an overflowing bookshelf and flurryin' through a stack of stiff old magazines before burying dead with a snowstorm of paper shapes flying about in its whistling airstream.

All my impulses to fight were summoned as the sting bloomed, then began to fade. I wanted nothin' more than to jettison across the room, drop Daddy Swan to the floor, rip open his torso with my teeth tearing, my fingers slicing, my mouth emptying him of all his bloodied organs. Venom pooled in my mouth, making me gag as I swallowed it back.

I didn't sway.

None of us moved.

My eyes were black as night.

"Guess that's that then," Constable Crackshot glanced at me and lowered his head in a nonverbal 'Okay then', but through his casual bullshitin' I could hear his awareness. He was staring into the face of a creature capable of swiping him from the face of the earth in a thrash of gore that would have him done-over as nothin' more than a wet, pulpy puddle in less than a minute.

_And he was relieved I was the man who'd be looking after his daughter. _Because he understood nothing less than a savage like me would do the job right.

Before he could get all congratulatory and shit, he rallied and shoved both the gun and his finger at me, "But y'all ain't getting' married jest yet, right?"

"No sir," at this stage of the game, short answers seemed to work best.

"Well that's a relief, boy. 'Cause I don't condone the nuptials at such an early age… _I'm referring to Bella, of course._"

_Oh irony, you comical whore._ Turning her dead like me? _Fine_. Gettin' married at the age of eighteen? _Not so much._

With the smoke settled, Bella came to me, caressing my arm, kissing my shoulder.

"When?" Charlie wanted to know… when was I going to take his daughter?

I looked down at Bella and pressed my lips to the top of her hair, touchin' that little widow's peak I'd always loved. She smiled and sat down, "In a couple of weeks."

_Two weeks._ I took in a rattling breath.

Patting the brown sofa, she invited Charlie to her side, "I love you, Dad. And this is what I want."

All the bluster ran out of him, leaving him deflated. He clasped her to him, and I smelled the puff of his Old Spice scent plume with their embrace, "You want me to be there?"

_Shit, that was unexpected. And since what I was plannin' involved a good bit of XXX action, I friggin' hoped Bella would-_

"I don't think that's a good idea," she sighed.

_Too right._

I ranged away and massaged my shot-at muscle and looked back as Bella and Chump-Change sat quietly side-by-side.

"Well, I'm not surprised." Charlie's face was damp; he couldn't hold them tears back any longer. But his head was high, his voice was strong.

"So that's it?" Bella asked.

"Not a whole helluva lot I can do against the supernatural, is there?"

_Well, no. They'd already proved that point twice over._

"'Sides, you love him?"

She smiled so genuinely at me, with such true feelin' I had to push my palm over my chest to contain the inanimate swell of it, had to lean back to the wall and brace myself as her emotion flooded me, "Yeah."

Charlie hitched up his mustache at me as though the damn thing had its own voice, "You?"

"With everything I am," I didn't add on the disclaimer that I was nothin' but a villain, that I was undeserving of his daughter's golden anointment; that I was basically the luckiest sumbitch ever there was.

"And I know Mama Brown approves, I trust her judgment," Charlie tried to ignore the invisible velvet chain linkin' me to Bella with our vows. "Speakin' of, that M'Esme of yours is a damn fine woman… _vampire_… whatever." He looked thoughtful and rubbed his gut, "Sure can cook, too. Although why the hell she'd go to all that trouble…

"Yeah, so, I shot him, _you_ shot him, I know this all has to do with somethin' going down between you Cullens and some other clan," _more like supernatural superpower,_ "and I guess the best way to keep you safe, honey, is to let you… _die first._" He ended with a frown and another pass of his hands over his drooping eyes.

"But you best take care of her," he warned me with a snarl to rival my own.

With nothin' but my love on the line, I promised, "It will be my honor."

"And don't you think for one minute I can't find a way to hurt you, sonny," he threatened, then mumbled, "Don't care how old y'are."

Looping her arm around her dad's waist, Bella rested against his chest. He gruffly asked, "So, they got support groups for this kind of thing?"

She giggled, "That's what I wanted to know! I asked about Hell-Anon."

"What about Demon-Anon Adult Family Group Meetin's?"

_Yeah, alright fuckin' wiseasses. _

"Maybe I could get a shirt for after," Bella grinned, "I survived the change and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."

I spoke over Charlie's roar of laughter, "And me!"

"Of course, baby."

"What about bumper stickers, like them 'My child is a terrific kid' ones they give out at school," Charlie joked.

_Fuck this shit_. I decided to join in, "Well it could read 'My child is a terrifying killer'."

_And… that put paid to that._

_**~~TGIF: Thank God I'm forgiven~~**_

"Cavalry's in town," my plans for another afternoon of straight-up fuckin' was thwarted.

"You gonna go in guns blazin' again?" Bella smoothed her skirt down her thighs, which was a cryin' shame.

"Hold up now, I'm about the only one who hasn't held a firearm in the past two days," I defended myself.

She turned course on a dime, "I know, baby." She took the utmost care to swirl her fingers languidly up my inner thigh until she just about reached the head of my hard dick, "But you're always packin'."

_Fuuuuck._

We picked our way through the crop of cars that had put down roots since we'd been out to Charlie's: Bubba's big monster ride, Rose's El Camino, Maw's Merc and Carl's shit-heap were all nested like eggs up to the Bronco. Even Jazz's classic Ford and Alice's Kawasaki were lined up nice and neat, because_, why walk from next door when you could drive? _ It was the American Way after all.

I felt part happy, part delirious, and another part annoyed at their appearance so I did the only thing I knew how and wrapped an arm under Bella's knees, one behind her back, lifted her up and kissed her until our bodies thrived together while I blindly sought the porch, the screen door and-

"Surprise!"

_Holy Hell._

A rainshower of… _white rice?_... pelted my face. A flock of doves took flight, which was another shame because a brace of them made for a decent enough drink. Bella was jigglin' in my arms and laughing, which she shouldn't do because even though she was light as those white feather's wafting down, I was in such shock I nearly dropped her.

Maw was fit to be tied as she tried to explain in a rush, "Now I know you ain't tied the knot yet, but just look at you carryin' our Bella over the threshold! And I couldn't resist, I've been researching and lookin' into things and I'm just so excited…"

Everyone else was ignorin' the much ado about nothin'.

_Tried to tell her._

_She won't listen._

_Like a runaway train…_

Bubba was draped in yards of tulle or some fuckin' gauzy crap. _Fool._

Rose was sharpening one of the knives she liked to use for target practice.

Alice was makin' sure there wasn't any more loose change secreted away in the Lay-Z-Boy.

Paw had his eyes glued to the pantry door, where he knew his own personal ambrosia of junkfood awaited.

Jizz was propped up with a stack of periodicals that were a bit more learned than my own classic porn collection. "You'll like this: _South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum, _said one James Petigru upon hearing of South Carolina's secession from the United States."

Flippin' a quarter between her fingers, the Waifish Wraith sauntered over to him, "I love it when you talk dirty history to me."

I put Bella down and watched her sexy ass swish back and forth as she went to the kitchen, then I watched her tits as she returned with a bag of opened Cheetos, crunching the snacks between little white teeth that had been at my balls too long ago.

Shakin' like he had the DT's, Paw managed to say, "Why can she have 'em and I can't?"

Apparently, Maw had decided Carl could have one addiction only. Because that always worked out so well for our family. So, Carl had chosen his cigars and Co' Cola over potato chips.

But he was rethinkin' it now.

"Because she's a human and you're not," Esme hardly glanced up from what seemed to be a balsa wood army of four-top tables with little… _vampires?_ She rearranged the placecards again for our would-be wedding reception.

With one hand at the back of my neck and the other beckoning Bella to me, I laid it out, "Yeah, about that."

All eyes snapped to mine.

"Not for much longer."

A jumblin' tumble of words and thoughts sped like more bullets over me, denting me, makin' me numb out and just hang onto Bella, makin' a beeline for her throat with my lips and nose:

_This calls for a celebration!_

_Can I have some Ruffles now that it's been decided?_

_Where's the bong, bro?_

_Let me get out the 'for company' glasses… thank goodness we restocked the blood and sweet tea today._

_Beer, please._

_I'll have a bourbon and branch._

_Wait._

Wait?

_Hold up._

Huh?

_I don't want Bella to be like us._ That was Rose.

_Y'all are getting married proper first, right? You know I didn't raise you any other way._ That was Maw.

Man, no matter what the hell I did, I was stitched up; hitched, mated, or not.

Seemed refreshments were on hold as everyone talked over themselves again in a massed thicket of words and thoughts.

"Can it!" Maw finally busted in.

"Alright, shi-" I rethought that one, "_Shoot._ I'm sorry, but we're not getting' married."

"There's always common law."

"Civil Union."

"Livin' in sin," Bella winked at me.

_Now that sounded good._

"I want to speak to Bella, alone," Rose intoned.

_And that sure as shit didn't._

In a mood, Maw took her marriage ideas in a cloud of veils and a fair few curses with her to the Mercedes, leavin' us with a decree to Carl, "Keep your hands off the Stay-Pufts, too."

Ushered onto the porch, me and Em cracked a couple laughs, "Hey Maw! I don't think he's goin' anywhere near our Stay-Poof!" She glared even harder while we made fun of Jizz.

We pulled our barstools—a new addition from someone or other's dumpster raid—to the railin', because we didn't have a bar.

Attempting to lead them off the scent, and buy myself some time to eavesdrop, I asked, "What you been up to?"

Bubba reached over, laid out a six pack and started in, "Oh man, I went to get some Mucinex-D and you wouldn't believe the rigmarole. Even asked for my ID. _For cough medicine._"

"I did a little artificial insemination today… right pretty cow," Carl gave his piece. He was still sweatin' over his munchies though.

"Got us a trampoline installed out back of the single wide," Jazz grinned.

"No shit!" Bubba started getting' excited, because he liked to bounce and shit.

As I ignored their banter and focused on Bella and Rose through the window, I watched my woman stand true and tall. Even though this day had been fraught with turmoil, she was still brave as ever. Hell, if anyone had a lionheart, it was she.

_And I was going to make it stop beating._

I threw more dirt over the pinebox that interred those thoughts of mine and listened closer:

_What about children?_

My entire world stilled on its axis.

_Is it selfish of me to just want Eddie?_

I inhaled.

I remembered all she'd said about those hard times with Renee, about how she and her mother lived in the back of a pickup. About how she'd eaten cereal for supper and made it sound like a banquet. And my chest creaked open, bled out.

_There's no going back, Bella._

_I know. And I still believe… I really know, there will never be a man like him for me. And I just feel, there is so much more to this, than me and him. There is… more._

_I always wanted to be who I was. Minus Royce, of course. It's taken me almost one hundred years to find a family. You are blessed, Bella, to know this from the start. _

_Will you stay by me?_

_Always, my sister… always._

I pounded back two beers and slid away from the porch to meet Bella at the door.

Rose couldn't resist a final twist, "So, when are you moving back to the cottage?"

_No fuckin' way._

I shooed those motherfuckers off like they were nothin' but horseflies on a mound of honeydew.

Sprays of dirt cluttered up in the driveway and hadn't even met the earth again before I caged Bella to me. My hands were wild between her thighs, her tits hitting me chest, my lips breathin' hard at her ear, "You are _not_ movin' back to Rose's."

I carried her over to the porch freezer and asserted my position with my teeth making dust cloths of her top, and my lambent tongue strollin' up the groove of her belly.

Manglin' her bra out of the way, I stopped just enough to watch the rise and fall of her boobs, the sleek nipples on top like monochromatic cherries. The industrial-sized cooler buzzed on and vibrated Bella's bounty right up to me.

_Man, I loved that thing._

Grabbing her hips to hold her still when I sucked at the undersides of her engorged tits, I pulled a hot, hard nipple between my lips, I tore into her eyes and pressed my cock against her opened thighs, "Stay with me."

"Okay, _Jesus._ Like I was gonna leave. _Keep your pants on_," she moaned.

_So the wrong thing to say._

Just to prove my point—_that I was in charge_—I started takin' my pants _off._

"Oh good GODDAMN," Bella smirked and held my cock in her vision with a covetous leer that was matched only by the heel of her palm pressing against my ready-fuckin'-now head.

_Yeah, now we were talkin'._

My tongue licked over her hips, curling into her waist, tickling her with my short breaths and my hands lowered so slowly Bella sucked in and held onto the glazed cooler's edge, _waiting._

At her thighs, I stopped being gentle. I spread her apart so the escaping air from inside the icechest hit her pussy with a slap that echoed my fingers tapping, lightly smacking her wet lips.

"You seem," she gasped and rocked when my knuckles rapped against her clit, "_oh yeah… _A little bit… _yes!... _perturbed."

_Perturbed?_

I slurped down the line of her thong and held her eyes, her waist, her breast, licking and sucking. "Pissed off, more like."

_Lap._

"I been shot twice today."

My nose was against her hot, fleshy folds_, _"Maw fuckin' ambushed us with birds and rice."

With just my thumb, I parted her panties and frenched her hot cunt until my entire face was planted completely against her, and her berry-slick essence was a wet and wanton bouquet all over my lips, tongue, cheeks.

Her body was incredible as it turned up above me, around me, surrounding me.

Licking her evenly, up and down, I watched her hooded eyes dilate till they were near black as mine, "I hear you're thinkin' about movin' back in with Rose?"

Gasps and moans and her belly sucked in, her tits gusted out, her arms craned me closer, threw me away, tore at my hair. Her voice lowered and lowered and she grasped my skull, held onto my shoulders at each lull, then watched with wide eyes stationed on mine when I fucked her back up again.

On the point of my tongue.

Working in and out of her.

_Could never ever suck her pussy enough to assuage this desire._

"I don't… fuckin'… think so," I punctuated the words with decided thrusts of my reaching, swirling fingers inside her pussy, and my tongue drumming on her clit.

"_Aaaah, Eddie!_" And still she tried to tell me off, "You don't tell me-" her approbation died in her throat as I gorged myself, my lips to her cunt, my tongue tucked all the way inside, my fingers diggin' into her sweet legs, keeping her still. She managed to wrangle about until I turned my face up, licked my mouth and sneered, "Keep still now, darlin', so I can tongue fuck you proper."

Bella orgasmed with the tough touch of my words over and over again.

Raising myself until I loomed over her, I picked her up with my hands bowling under her heart-shaped ass and carried her straight through to the kitchen where I deposited her in a chair. And because she might-could protect me, but _hell_ if she could resist me, I told her, "Undo my jeans."

Each tug of the buttons comin' loose lifted more toxin up my large shaft until it beat against my pelvis. "Take out my-"

Bella already had her hands wrapped around me and her nose smothered in my balls, her breath damply ticklin', "Your cock." Running her doubled-up fists up over my head she inhaled my musky scent, "I _love _your cock."

As she leaned in for a lick, I pulled just back, "Uh-uh."

She widened her thighs, lifted her skirt, licked her lips deliciously and opened her mouth, showing the tip of her tongue resting against the tops of her pearly teeth.

And she waited until I asked, my hands framed around the root of my shaft, "You want this?"

"_Always_," her eyes her were liquid… light and dark, and her honeyed voice saying that word meant more than just my dick in her mouth…_always_. She meant she was goin' to take me in her, have me with her, _forever._

Frowning and biting down, grinding my teeth, I swayed as my cock made way past the purse of her lips. I closed my eyelids and arched up all the way to the balls of my feet, "Oh Bella!" I looked down and cribbed her face tenderly in my hands, "Bella, _Bella._ _Always."_

Then it was too fast, too savage, a wild ripping off of clothes, hands grabbing, her feet on my ass and tryin' to dig in, my teeth bared only to snap down—_not yet, not now_—mouths solid together and tongues twining.

It was sweaty and messy and hot and all over the kitchen… every surface, each of the one and a half counters, the fridge and finally braced with my thighs splayed in the entryway.

I went at her with shallow thrusts, watchin' her boobs roll up and down, sittin' back to pluck those tips to high taut nipples.

"Jesus, more!"

Her waist was encased in my hands, her hair fallin' down almost to the floor, my hips hitting hers, trolling around and pulling out fast.

"You can tell me what to do most near all the time, _darlin'_," I put her on the table and crawled up on top of her, punctuatin' my rugged gasps with my dick dividing her lovely velvet channel just far enough to fuck against her aching, hot, rough g-spot, but not long enough in any position to get her off. Not hard enough to hit all the way inside her, though my arms were shakin' and my balls were heavy and my cock was so big it wanted to yank free of my leashed chain to shove so completely up inside her… all the way so we'd both wail in immediate release.

"But I'm a man, _sort of…"_ I slowed and hauled her up to me, bringin' our flesh so close together there was nothin' in the moment but sheer slow fucking and sighs and kisses that never stopped and hands that found just the right purchase. And it was purity, this goddamn everything-nothing between us in the giant gust of silence when our bodies stopped and…

_On the other side, Bella screamed out while I roared!_

We ended up a sloppy mess on the floor, fuckin' drained.

_Momentarily._

Bella snuggled closer, her hands a wash of heat up and down my back, "I get it, baby."

I kissed over her shoulders, imparting, "And I get you."

"Yeah, you do," she righted herself so she was once more fully jammed on me and my dick made full sail again.

"Now, how about that romance you promised me?"

I chuckled and motioned over the broken-up kitchen, "What? This ain't romantic enough for you?"

_**Free trip to Heaven**__**! Details inside…~~**_

I sent down a small thanks to whoever thought well enough of me to keep the weather scorching because it meant Bella was clad in as skimpy a sundress ever there was. It was feminine as fuck and afforded me all her long, ivory legs to look at. 'Course, that little postage stamp-sized skirt also meant I got a prime shot of the triangle of sheer nothingness between her thighs when she mounted the bike.

_I'd fuckin' give her romance._

And that started with me and my Harley.

A dollop of sun splattered over her sweetly freckled shoulders, the mornin' just getting started.

Situating a helmet over her waves, I kissed the little dimple in her chin and strapped her up safe.

"I really wish you'd wear one too," Bella held onto me.

_Ha fuckin' ha._

I straddled the padded leather and listened to the purr of the engine, feeling the sibilant muzzle combined with the shuffle of Bella's opened legs parkin' up to mine. Warm, soft woman behind me, hard and powerful mechanical muscle under me, her fingers linked over my stomach, alternately playin' through my trail of coarse hair and littering in and out of my waistband… _fuck yeah, heaven on Earth._

Only one thing would make it better and that'd be fuckin' Bella on the Harley, en route. But since I didn't want to do anythin' as foolish as put her life at risk before I drained her and reanimated her mahself, I settled for second best, crackin' open the Pabst and takin' a thorough drink.

Bella tutted against me. Because me—with my reflexes, mind reading', and general hillbilly unkillability—drinkin' and driving was a no-no. But, on the other hand, drinkin' blood as a rule? Perfectly acceptable.

Finished with the first, I wanted to ask her to hand me another from the back, but didn't want to risk her takin' her hands off me.

The wind all but muffled her voice, yet I heard Bella tickin' off the signs as we autobahned past, "_Dingle Road."_

"_Fuchs Boulevard."_

"_Martin Sausage Trail?"_

She took in the 'Welcome To' sign as we passed the new town limits, "Moncks Corner?"

I throttled up and sprayed shale all over the monks' minivan in the otherwise empty lot.

Astonished, and admonishing, Bella struggled out of the helmet, flushed and stunning, "I know things have been hard on you, but no need to make a eunuch of yourself."

I laughed and launched off my motorcycle, walked over to Bella as she surveyed the soft, golden, stone construction of the Trappists.

Suddenly, I felt… _shy?_

Hefting the supplies with no effort at all, I squired Bella with my hand to the dimples of her back, braising her ass. I leaned over and lowered my sunglasses, "They don't much like me here at Mepkin Abbey, but they always expect me."

I took her down the trail to the left, where coneflowers and other such shit wept over the path with bracken and blossoms and the beatin' wings of butterflies… the buzz-hum of honeybees.

"I come here when I need to be alone."

She stopped, "You were here! When you disappeared, after El Scummo… _you came here._"

I nodded.

The landscape changed to a drab oaken alley, then metamorphosed again.

Laden before us was a meadow knee-deep in full bud. Scatters of poppies and sunflowers, ragweed and more floral stuff spread like a pastel sea in a painting by that 'Happy Trees' motherfucker on PBS.

"Yeah, so, I don't know if this shit qualifies as romance or whatever," I shrugged, a knot in my throat, "but I brought a picnic." _And I'd damn sure love her to suck my dick, out of doors._

Beatific of smile, Bella was a thousand times more glorious than this bucolic setting. She frolicked away from me and danced through the colorful, nodding flowers, filling the field with her light laughter. She came back and grabbed my hands, linked our fingers, "It is perfect, Eddie."

"In that case, I got some more romance for you." I got on my knee before Bella and watched her closely. Her face flushed prettily, her breathing increased so her boobs pushed out sensually, the breeze riffled her loose hair into a veil around her shoulders. "Bella Swan, would you do me the great honor of becoming my immortal mate?"

She matched me on the ground.

I slid a slim, unadorned, platinum band over her finger… thinkin' it would have to do since she wouldn't be able to get that tattoo about bein' 'Eddie's Woman' in another couple weeks or so.

"For better, _and _worse." Bella wound herself around me, her tongue inside my mouth, her lips passionately melded to mine, her hips rotatin' against my cock so I really wanted to push aside her panties and surge up into her.

It took a fuckin' untold amount of willpower, but I went for more of this romance crap instead of screwin' Bella right then and there.

After shaking out a blanket and laying out the food—made by Maw and packed by the Niggling Nag, _although I did add the brews myself_—I spread my legs and had Bella sit right in front of me so I could at least get my hard-on against her soft ass while she ate.

With a mess of a white and yellow wobbly thing called, of all the damn things, a deviled egg halfway to the mouth I wanted suckin' on me, Bella teased, "Baby, if you think I'm gonna' blow you when I'm done you've got another thing comin'."

_Oh yes, I fuckin' hoped so_. Me! I wanted to be cumming.

Turned out, she weren't actually teasing as she continued, "Eddie, it's hallowed ground."

"And?" This was makin' no sense to me.

"Well, it'd be sacrilegious, wouldn't it?"

_Would it? Why the shit should I care?_

"C'mon, Bella, _please_ give me head," I leaned away and parted the top of my jeans enough she could see the thick swollen head and the first few inches of my rigid, vein-ribboned shaft when I grasped my cock on a low moan and lifted it out.

Her eyes and fingers and mouth were drawn to my long erection. With a final, faint denial, "I don't hold with desecration, but since you used your manners…" Bella hungrily immersed her lips over me, and down me, her tongue flattening against my aching cock.

"_Oh, thank fuck," _I caressed her cheek and watched the way my dick became wet with her saliva and my sap, and when I was thrusting up and down in time to her sucking… _Friar fuckin' florid faced Tuck came out from around the bend. _

_Holy cock suckin' interruptus. _Fucking literally.

The brother's eyes were bulging-as was my dick-and his mouth up-and-downed like a fat-lipped fish, and I didn't know if it was his vow of silence that kept him quiet or just plain shock, but he didn't stick around so I could find out.

The final folds of his cassock whispered away but his presence lingered. Since she'd been caught red-handed… _red-lipped, whatever…_, Bella deigned there'd be no more fellatin' around at the friary.

Once I'd crushed my cock back into my pants and Bella had contentedly munched on the assortment of other picnic victuals (instead of my prick), I led her back through the woods with my arm over her shoulders.

Everything about her felt so good, so right.

'Course it couldn't last.

We came out into the large courtyard, surrounded by flanks of columns.

A fountain fell frothily about like watery giggles.

But there was nothin' to laugh at.

The cloisters became suffocatingly claustrophobic.

Bella turned her face from me, her look scheming and distant.

"Don't." I brought her back around to me.

"Don't what?" she closed her eyes, struggled to get away from me.

We may have sat in the meadow with the height of summer glowing around us, with the fruitful exhalations of flowers injecting pollen to the air, with a feeling of life and love and peacefulness.

But that was only half the goddamn story.

I'd spent so much time here, alone, in the past that I'd become blinded to the scene.

Now? It _blindsided_ me with portent, with menace, with a cruel stabbing to my being.

_This _was the battlefield to come.

_Sandstone pillars, that fuckin' fountain, a piazza formed with reliquary, and Bella's hummingbird heartbeat as the foundation. _

_Alice's vision._

Every christly thing zoomed in so tight I grasped Bella just to know she was still with me, "_Don't… don't._"

And she knew exactly what I saw because when she finally opened her heavy eyes to mine their dark brown weight spelled out our precise doom.

"Don't you think it," she begged, and tears played sadly down to her mouth where I kissed their saltiness away.

"You're not supposed to know this," Bella pleaded.

"Don't leave me," I grabbed her closer, mated her skin to mine, her flesh to be _of mine._

"No matter what," her hands framed my face and her lips met my mouth and her words worried me more, "I'll _always_ be with you."

Silence. Her heart. The hot sun. The flowers dipping, the air drippin' humidity, and time we didn't have.

I mapped her body with my hands and my vision, vaulting every memory of her flesh inside my head.

What had been pure kisses back in the meadow turned dark and sinister, engulfing us with desperation.

With hands tied together and lips moistly meeting, _with hearts pledged, _Bella whispered, "Baby, it's started."

_I draw you close to me, you women,  
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,  
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for  
others' sakes,  
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,  
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me._

_It is I, you women, I make my way,  
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,  
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,  
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States, I  
press with slow rude muscle,  
I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,  
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated  
within me._

~ Excerpt from _A Woman Waits for Me_, Walt Whitman

* * *

~Oh, what was that? Some sexy? Some sassin'? Some…_romance_? And the big 'Oh. Hell. No.' Go'on now, give Eddie a little holiday kiss ;)~

Thanks to Udo Blick for the poem.

Special thanks for those church signs! I love 'em, keep them coming!

Huge, massive love to **ROBZSINGER** for makin' a standout sexy-as-hell Rebelward video, and to Bell Jacobsen for her very erotic Dead Confederates viddy. Both can be found at the new, naughty, awesome _**Rebelward Without a Cause**_** blog **(links to everything always on my profile):

**http : / rebelward . wordpress . com/**

Cheers so much for all of the love and reviews and faves! Special thanks to UberVamp for tumblr'ing the hell outta Eddie …you can now find **Eddie on tumblr** (and still on Facebook, along with me, although not on twitter):

**http : / eddie-dc-cullen . tumblr . com/**

Lots o'love to Quantum-Fizz for her delicious pimp of DC's in _The Plan_. 3 you, babe.

Ho Ho H00r, and Happy Holidays from me and the DW Deadnecks!

Rie~


	30. Ain't No Rest for the Wicked

Giant Huge Enormous Love to my amazingly patient betas…Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta, whom I heart more than 3….

**Rie's Plea:** Just a word to the wise…you want all the rest of this story to make sense? Read the outtakes. Specifically (for this chapter) _Indian Red_, and then read _Crucible_ before the next one.

**Rie's Happy!: **Thanks so much for all the recent reviews…somewhere around a hundred since last posting (which, many of you know, is bloody fucking difficult)! Eddie and me are havin' a fantastically fucked up time on Facebook (yo, Blackie, say that three times fast, next Sat. night) and tumblr and are really, _totally_, honored by all the amazing raunch (I mean porn, I mean 'tasteful erotica'), artwork, vids, and hilarity. So, cheers, ladies!

**Special thanks MsEm and Lindz for their continued DC creations for the chapters/teasers on the blog (hot hot hot! Oh, and then there was Bubba). Mucho love to Gasaway, winterstale, and MC GK who gave me some goods for this chapter, and also to Mr. Cornuta as well as, goes without sayin', extra special kisses to the Vibrarian**

Disclaimer: I'm sorry, I don't care. The boys are mine. (Twilight and all that vampire type stuff, _I guess, _are not mine.

~~Crazy, crazy times y'all! And still, NSFW ;)~

**Song: **

_Ain't No Rest for the Wicked_, Cage the Elephant

www . youtube . com/watch?v=HKtsdZs9LJo&ob=av2nl

* * *

**Ain't No Rest for the Wicked**

"_Baby, it's started." _

'Course, when she'd said that, I'd leapt to my feet, took up a striking stance with Bella shielded behind me. Scanning the area for threats and more assholes in gay robes… all's I got was an eyeful of sweeping, sissy gowns down to the ground. Those fuckin' Eye-talians would blend right in with the likes of these other-brothers.

But I hadn't gotten any warning shot fired across my frontal lobe from Callous Malice the Contrarian.

So_._.. _it's started?_

What the?

_She was turning? _

No goddamn way.

She could _not_ spontaneously become a vampire, _although if anyone could, it'd be Bella._ Talk about gettin' gypped… I wanted a goddamn taste first-

_What? _Shit. _Huh?_

She was smack dab in front of me, pinchin' my cheeks instead of hand-fucking my cock.

_It_ twitched.

Her breath hitched.

She frowned.

I wanted to go down on her.

And even more when she mumbled with a flush to her cheeks and a lowering of her widow's peak, "My period."

The hedonistic rush of her blood hit my nose and jettisoned me back to the stone escarpment.

Enthralled, but pulling off an _okay, whatever_, I exhaled a huge sigh—because I'd just taken a lungful like a bong hit of her sanguine LTC—and felt, _and feigned,_ relief. "Oh, _that._" _Relief_ because damn true I was doin' the turning; _regression_, because fuckin' straight up I wanted my mouth right at her pussy.

My eyes musta lit up but good as I savored her fluid, arch scent with a '_Smells Like Dinner/Open for Business!'_ sign neon-flashin' over my face because Bella raised her hands and wrinkled her nose and glared at my tumescent crotch, "No. Way."

Pushing off from the stony blocks, I leered at her, my hand goin' from my wilderness hair to my chest and down over my abs she'd licked and kissed and rubbed against like lustful succubus before.

She stopped her backward movement and stuck to my fingers' progress as I lifted the hem of my shirt. Gulping hard at the vision of my muscles plunging in a groove to my groin, hidden only by washed-out, low-ridin' jeans that didn't do a fucking thing to deny the way my boner shaped a long, rock ridge all the way across my right hip, I do believe Bella stuttered, "Um, yeah, w-w-what?."

I bolstered my hands on either side of her head and tilted my own silently, rollin' my hips in with just enough of a touch that she could tell just how turned on I was, but not enough to relieve any real ache gatherin' in the topmost part of her pussy. Her recovery wasn't quite as fast as her panting breaths, but still, she tried, "First of all, this is hallowed ground…"

"I seem to recall you sayin' that not too long ago, and we both know how _that_ went down." I caught her earlobe with my mouth for a nibble, _"Went down with my cock in your mouth."_

Cupping her luscious ass in my hands to keep her up when her knees buckled, I drove my point—and my erection—home, "C'mon, baby, be like an appetizer before the main course." I pleaded with my eyes, my swinging hips, shearing through my bottom lip, my body ablaze and already crazed for her blood… _famished to taste._

She began to giggle.

I backed up enough to catch her amused, smirking lips. "What? Too much?"

She laughed, "Yeah, a little bit. And besides, that's crass, even for you."

"Is it?" I stalked back against her, pinpointed to the way her thighs parted, her tits rounded up, her nose impertinently rose to the noonday sun. Her laugh turned tarnished and not at all convincing. "Done heard that one too, as I recall_. Country cock?"_

Flints of my diamond skin refracted off of her the nearer I ranged.

With one finger, I drew a long line down her arched neck, around her collar bone, between the tits I was definitely gonna fuck again soon, and over her waist from one hip to the other, "I think…"

Her voice was all but a sensual moan, "What?"

I looked up at her with all-black irises, "You just tryin' to distract me from all this shit?" I gestured to the monks' courtyard, falling back into the horrifying understanding she knew so much more than me of what was to come.

_And that her fucking life… that thing that was both freakin' existential and tangible… was in danger no matter what I did or how quickly I turned her or what she became._

_Goddamned End Game. _

Licking her lips languorously, she counted her fingertips up the thick muscles on my ribs beneath my shirt, "Depends. Is it working?"

"Depends. Do I get an aperitif?"

Her eyes widened with lovely brown and her mouth opened, but there weren't no sound.

"What? I was bein' serious, Bella. Don't tell me you're fuckin' surprised I want a taste-test, are you?"

She hovered for a minute between disbelief, candor, and coyness… then settled for jokin', "No, baby, I just can't believe you used the word 'aperitif'."

Throwing my head back, I laughed so long and loud a bunch o' monks opened old lead casements and stuck their bald pates out to see just what the fuck was goin' on down below in the cloisters.

"Sorry bros! 'S'okay… just me and my dame. Promise not to get us damned straight to hell by—" I finger quoted, "—'desecratin' this 'inviolable' sanctum."

Windows clattered shut and I winked at Bella, "How's that for usin' my words?"

"Well, you're a smithy alright," she referred to the unstoppable iron rod in my pants, and not my wordiness.

Then she was walkin' off!

Towards the domicile.

_Where the fuck?_ I needed to fetch her back.

The vestibule opened in advance of her, as if she'd been expected, and I pounced forward, "Bella?"

"Easy, lover," she looked back over her shoulder as she disappeared into the damp, cool sandstone enclave, "Just seein' to my womanly matters."

_Okay. Okay._

After she'd excused herself, I was left in the loggia. Alone. It was no longer a bethel but a future battlement.

_But not now, not yet… not… quite._

I sagged with that slight reprieve against one of the pillars, only to have it groan and shift and start to break apart with my formidable weight. Spinning, I quickly held the motherfucker from disintegrating completely apart and letting down the entire grotto, splittin' the air with a construction worker's whistle to get the Benedictines' attention. A scurry of feet, and a few weird prostrations later—while I basically held the entire monastery up with fantastical force alone-I maintained the column's integrity with my hands while the brothers reinforced the fractured stone with wooden two-by-fours.

I made a show of wipin' my forehead of fake sweat and slapped a palm against the wood—_not my wood, of course, because the brothers just didn't do it for me that way-_"Just put it on my tab."

Under the toxic thrill called up by so many unmentionable things-including the race of the Volturi to the lowcountry, the thought of Bella bleeding freely, the fact I'd just gotten a little bit off on showin' off my strength-I forgot my fuckin' power and shouldered against the pale-faced pulpiteer beside me, inadvertently sending him flying like a gowned albatross to the next column… _and so on and so forth… _until a domino effect made a complete fuckin' cock-up of the courtyard.

_Boom-boom-BOOM!_

One-by-one the monoliths shuddered, stilled for an instant, then crumbled to the left. I caught the first and the second, strainin' to hold them both upright and then the friggin' capital slid slowly off the second and spanked the next and then…_total fucking mayhem._

Dust flyin' in clouds of white sandstone felt like insulation fibers in my intractable lungs. The long, black drapes of the brothers covered in whitewash like they'd been rubbed like erasers over chalky blackboards. Runnin' this way and that, they damn near resembled the squawking chickens they let free-range—a melee of flappin', beplumed motherfuckers—_Sorry, Mary, don't mean to take your name in vein, or vain, or… what-the-fuck-ever._

As the dust liked to settle, someone coughed and another one sneezed and the smoky, itchy, ash mushroom clouded again.

All the eyes of all the mortified monks were trained on me, as I buttressed the last standin' caryatid.

I shoved off just as Bella entered the razed round, shuffling through the debris towards me, "Eddie?"

Prayers canticled around us, swampin' me and Bella in a long-lost tongue I understood just about as well as Pig Latin.

Flippin' open my billfold, I crossed my heart—_or whatever I was supposed to do in front of these supplicants—_and counted off an even amount that had Bella doin' her own blessing and the friars-fucked whispering amongst themselves. "Figger I better pay in cash this time, dudes," I explained myself.

I set a wad of bills on the lip of the fountain and added two more at the gathered's raised eyebrows meetin' their hairless foreheads.

_I mean, fuck. 25K oughta cover the damage, right? Weren't my fault they didn't know fuck about quality control._

I took Bella's hand to the crook of my elbow and then lifted her from under her knees, partin' from the rubble and cinders with hurried steps.

_Because…_

Yep, there it was.

Just as I'd suspected.

That last column crumbled with an atomic cloud billowing up to the skyline.

_Whoops._

_**~~ ll~~**_

All in all, Deputy Dildo turned out to be pretty cool, considerin' his daughter was walking down the road to dead.

_Make no mistake; he was still Sheriff Schmuck to me._

But Bella moved in to the DW—we borrowed the Penske from Texas next door, and I never did friggin' figger out just what the hell he was smuggling in the back of that thing.

In the days following the fracas at the friary, her shit spread all over the trailer like that invasive vine—Maw was always goin' on about it…what was it called? _Kuntsu_? No, _Kudzu_, _yeah_-but it weren't like the place had been pristine before, and it was definitely a welcome intrusion.

Woman-stuff.

All Over My Bedroom.

_Bras and panties and the stupidly sex-rated scent of her clothes and her tidy stack of magazines—all Taxidermy this and that—right next to my pile of dirty jeans._

And the pillow beside mine held the emboss of her head.

Then there were the shoes.

I'd lifted one tall, spike-heeled, black leather thing and caressed the arch, gaining myself a ragin' hard-on to Bella's coo.

That crap was _everywhere._

All avarice, I made her get nude, strap on some stilettos and show her gams off to me.

_Why?_

Because I was a glutton for punishment, _because_ Bella on-the-rag really wouldn't let me fuck her good.

I coulda' spent all day just sniffing, feeling, touching and goin' through her stuff… _g-strings, over-the-shoulder-boob-holders, perfume, scratchy notes and about a dozen half-drank glasses of sweet tea._

But I took a long shower, jerked off slowly to the tune of her lips sucking my cock right back into her throat and her fingers fondlin' my sac, and blasted the wall with an unforetold amount of cum.

_Yeah, I was lathered up alright._

Half-dressed, bare-chested, barefoot and wanting to fuck, I left Bella in bed and went out to hunt. I snacked on a lazy, nocturnal possum who didn't know enough to turn in when the sun rose up. A deer was next, then—_fucking yes—_I had me dessert from a frightened little fox.

She was sweet and her blood was filling, and I wrestled that little mammal to ground with a soothing _hush_ against the fur I parted, makin' way for my knife-like teeth.

I held her neck tight and stroked her trembling flank and remembered doin' just the same to humans.

_But it wasn't like Jesus Christ and the Holy Rollers were coming all over me._

I was what I was.

No guilt.

Just a true aim… for the first time. _I knew._ I knew exactly who I was, what I was and where I fuckin' belonged.

I wiped my mouth and headed back into the trailer.

It was locked.

I knocked.

"Knock knock."

_Fucking Bubba._

I twisted the handle and lobbed, "Open the goddamn door, knobhead."

"Knock knock," he called again.

_Fuck._

My voice stripped of any amusement whatso-fuckin'-ever, "Who's there… _motherfuckin'-cunt-lickin'-dense-headed-ignoramus._"

"Turin."

_Rose's own carpet muncher was recitin' fucking Danielle Steele titles so I couldn't infiltrate his thick-plated brain._ "Turin-_jesus-christ-in-a-cave-_Who?"

I suspected the bastard of havin' not only been dropped head first from the ugly tree but also of havin' been through a traumatic brain injury when he chuckled like a goddamn hyena, "_Turin_ Bella to a vampire soon!"

'Beavis and Bubba-head' wasn't seemin' to get the hint as the door still remained locked.

"Knock it off, Em."

"You're just sore 'cause you can't knock Bella up."

"Shut it before I knock your block off!" I kicked the door, _because for once, he'd gone too far, and I hoped to hell Bella hadn't heard him say that._

There was the flick of the lock and his glintin' golden eyes, "Sorry, Eddie."

I got him in a tight throat-hold and pile-drived him to the rug, waitin' until his eyes bulged further than a guppy's while Rose sauntered past givin' the count, "One. Two. Three. _And he's out._"

She tarried on up the hall.

He was still gasping and rubbing at his throat. I smacked his skull again, "What's with lockin' the door anyway?" I mean, _shee-it_, this was _'Cainwhore: Where You Don't Gotta Need To Lock Y'all's Door._ Small town, trusted living. With a small coven of vampires. Undercover-like.

"Cain't never be too careful, what with Chelsea and El-Sleezes running around and all them psycho-chicks you used to do like friggin' Cacky and Dasher-"

I halted him with my elbow to his sore windpipe, "Don't think a tinny scrap of a Yale lock's gonna keep the likes of the scummy vamps out."

"Stopped you, didn't it?"

Well_… asshole._ "I only didn't break the door down because I don't want Maw ridin' up our collective asses to fix the fucking place up."

He got to his feet, and I got to Bella at the back of the trailer toot-du-sweet, but she was… _showerin'._

No matter how much I wanted to strip off, open her thighs, sink my lips and cock and fingers and tongue up into her, I stomped in place and gingerly prodded the Pavlov. I went to my bureau and checked all my guns. _Sat on the bed and thumbed through a stack of porn._ Played a few keys on the upright.

_And still, she was in the shower?_

I coulda just sat there and cum in my jeans just listening to her pleased hum and the sound of water splashin' right over her _holy-hell-yeah_ tits and down her _suck-me _nips to her _lick-the-fuck _clit, but Maw was on laundry strike again because of some fucking dirty deed or other I'd committed against decorum, so I didn't want to get my last pair of pants all filthy.

In the end, I found myself doing the cuntin' accounts, instead of doing Bella-wonderin' what the hell was wrong with the universe to leave me with this G'dammned woeful state of affairs-when I ran across a receipt for… _a fuckin' Kindle?_ What the whore was that? Kindlin' was what I started a fire with, when I wanted to incinerate Bubba's recent wardrobe additions. Fuckin'. Fleece. Camo. Snuggie. Slippers.

He'd been rackin' up the bills, what with that Yamaha Grizzly 4-wheeler he'd had trucked up from The Redneck Yacht Club in Florida.

"What's this shittin' Kindle-thing now?" I shouted out.

His voice was muffled, _barely_, by the thin plyboard of the double wide's walls as he hollered back from the crapper—_Jesus Fuck, might as well call The John his study at this rate_—"Don't get your nuts in a twist, dickhead. Ain't like we gotta be worrying about the finances, is it?"

_Nah, not really. But still. I was savvy fucking enough to want to squirrel away a hefty friggin' nest egg, just in case every-goddamn-thing went to Hell in a handbasket, as it seemed destined to do._

"And furthermore," Asswipe sounded like he was recitin' the intro for Masterprick Theatre, "A Kindle is for readin' the books," he made further his plea… _seated on the potty._

"You get you some porn on that thing?" That there might make it worth the cost.

"Well, probably. But I been caught up in this Black Dagger Brotherhood series… _s'all about vampires._"

We snorted at the same time.

"You know," I called down the passage, "might as well save some money on that Kindle crap… just put a magnifyin' glass over your current supernatural smut, same diff at an nth the price."

The toilet groaned when Em reseated himself-_to my disgust_-and then he whined, "Why you always takin' pot-shots?"

"Why don't you just shit or get off the pot?"

There was a spin of the bog roll and a grunt that I really didn't need to friggin' hear, "I'm tryin', dude!"

I moved some stocks, using my high-frequency trading algorithm, and shifted some money overseas—padding the Liechtenstein bank account-and saw Bella comin' to me, damp from the shower.

"Tell me you weren't in there at the same time he was-"

Jumping to my feet, my eyes were like rifle sights on the bathroom door, my stance combative, my body ready to fuckin' rumble.

"Take it down a notch, killer_._" She puffed up her skirt and took me in hand—_fucking figuratively only—"_You know I was in the en-suite anyway, I heard you huffing and puffing out in the bedroom."

_Yeah, maybe, okay._

"Besides**, **you truly think I'm gonna get out the Gentle Glides with Bubba pinioned on the potty by his pants to his ankles?" she battered me with her boobs hangin' loose and ready and hot and pretty inside her tanktop_… the perfect defensive weapon. For fuckin' real, NSA needed her nipples to disarm the enemy since she could get me to drop a military position to take up my Cold Warhead with nothin' but her beautiful presence._

"I… what… _huh?_"

"Sit down, baby."

My ass hit the couch, with hers followin' close behind.

She settled herself around me, and her look fixed on my mouth, "You missed a spot."

Sensually, Bella licked the long line of my lip and curled into the corner of my mouth to take the final drop of fox blood off me.

_And that was so fucking hot I had to shove her up and strangle my cock at the base._

Bella's skirt lifted like the teasin' lilt of her lips as she unwound her legs from my hips and her arms from my shoulders.

I laid down the checkbook and the sheaf of bills I'd been payin'.

"Bella?" I touched her inner thighs and sighed into the long, lovely nape of her neck.

"Hmmm?" She'd turned away and was flickin' through one of Jizz's leftover newspapers, the print smoky on her fingertips. She didn't look up or halt her hand's hunt into one of Carl's contraband bags of Cool Ranch Doritos.

The coffee table facing us was a centerpiece of everyone's shit: A two liter of Coke, some fuckin' dust rags from Esme and a stack of clean laundry—the girls weren't on Maw's fluff and fold embargo-four half-chewed Stim-U-Dents of Jizz's makin' a lopsided star. An ashtray overflowed with herb butts. There was a stack of stolen what-evers from Made-to-Fuck-with-Me-Malice, price tags danglin' off. Rose had her waitress aprons pressed and ready, Bella's own bits of sketches were there too, amidst my bills and _Hustlers._

_And I liked the trailer, just like this._

I wondered what she thinkin' as she worked though the magazines.

Beside me, shouldered against me, Bella was… _well this was this shit, wasn't it?_ Bella was _IT_ for me.

And I wished so goddamn hard everything could remain just the way it was now.

I glanced over her tits and spoke fast and low, _"You feel so good._"

I had to laugh when she swatted me away like a fly only to feel up my cock, one hand flipping, one hand jerking.

When there was too much quiet, Bubba yelled from the bathroom, easy rancor to cheap plasterboard, "_Bro, you gotta read this when I'm done! Forget the Brotherhood; this Harlequin Silhouette—"Love's Burning Desire"._ _You know, one of 'em I picked up out at that used bookstore on 17 South? Time we ran into the latest pudwhacker-pup, Paul?"_

"Love's Burning Desire? Sounds like a ragin' case of the herpes, right there, Bubba!" While I was laughin' at Bubba's expense, Bella winked at me lasciviously, and her hands took back up her naughty walk down my button fly.

Groaning and grabbin' her hands to wrap them more forcefully around my hard-on, I begged,"Bella, _fuck_, please…_ just a handjob, a blowjob, fuck… anything_."

She smiled that 'I so own your balls' smile of hers, "Oh, you're gonna get way more than that, Eddie."

"I am?"

Lapping the hill of my clenched bicep, she whispered wetly against my skin, "_It's done."_

"It is?" I took over strokin' my cock because she was busy rubbing my pecs and making a hot, steamy path up and down the cords of my throat… _And what? What was done? _I wasn't about to get too excited if she was just windin' me up again._ What was that saying?_ Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice?_ Ah, whatever, I just needed to get laid already…_

"Uh huh," she had my shirt up my chest and her head moving from one side of my stomach to the other, "Finished my period."

Letting loose an almighty _whoop!_ I quickly ripped apart my jeans and spread her legs and pushed her panties aside and-

Bella was lookin' at me with astonished eyes and I heaved a sigh, and we both looked down at where the thick ridge of my dick slapped against her moist, parted lips, "What?"

_One slip, and I'd be in her_.

"I'm not fucking you with other people in the room."

"But they ain't in the room!"

"Let me rephrase then: Not fucking you when other people are in the trailer."

_What? Now that there was just crazy talk. _It'd been excruciating enough waiting for her to come off her period—_Seriously, what was a little blood between a vampire and his lady?—_presumably because she figured I'd be 'crass' enough to go down on her or maybe that I'd just be so overcome by the sumptuous**, **thrilling, sweet wet aroma I'd say screw this two-week-wait-shit and just ravage her veins right there and then…

_Yeah, it was probably a good idea we'd waited. _

"You're too loud when you get going, baby." Bella swept her legs aside and pulled her clothes all back together.

Groaning, I leaned back into the couch and threw my arms over my face, "Says the woman who sets off car alarms when I give her uncountable, wild, insane orgasms every time we fuck."

Just then, Rose's voice crystallized from the kitchen where she was taking stock of plasma bags, sweet tea half gallons, straws and assorted paper goods so Bella pointedly looked in that direction as if to say, _'See? She would have heard the whole thing.'_ "Hon," Rose yelled out to Em, who was still in the loo, "No one wants to read that shit but you."

"_Yeah, right._" I heard Bubba blowing his nose on the toilet paper. _"Don't tell me you didn't like it when we played 'The Master and Fair Maiden'... where do you think that idea came from?"_

"Okay, sugah… you just keep tellin' yourself that," Rose replied.

She came out and leaned against the crooked door jamb, "You know, with all those kinky props and costumes, we should just record our own."

_Now that got Bubba out of the bathroom._

"Huh?" Bubba and I spoke in stereo.

"Y'all were talkin' about supernatural smut and saving some bucks, _and porn_… might-could just make our own; now that'd surely keep the king in his counting house."

_Fuck, she was kiddin', right? _My head knew she was jokin', but my _other_ head was already settin' up the boardroom and the bedroom, and I was _more than ready_ to get down to business with Bella, 'cepting I didn't really want anyone else anywhere _ever_ fucking seein' her naked body so…

_She had to be takin' the piss… and not in the way Bubba was really attemptin' to take a leak._

"S'what I thought," Rose smirked at us as she strolled past, tucking Bubba's jaw back up from where it'd hit the floor, "All fuckin' talk."

She high-fived Bella on the way past, and Bella held onto her hand to stop her, "Don't you have a shift at Mama's?"

With a trip-top, Rose made for the porch where her heels click-clacked. Her Harley half-shirt was falling off one shoulder, and her hips swayed in time to her long blond braid. Bubba followed her out with a good grip on her ass and his other hand circling her tummy. After a long kiss just outside the screen door, Rose shot back, "And don't you have some dead meat to stuff?"

_**~~ll~~**_

Un-fuckin'-fortunately, the dead meat that wanted to do the stuffin'—_namely me-_ didn't get a chance that day because Bella had to head up to Summerville to ask Sue Pernell for a leave of absence for the foreseeable future.

She'd gathered up her bits and pieces, puttin' some of them to the side of the beat-up coffee table, placing a notebook and about three pencils found in the depths of her glossy mahogany hair, some scattered ripped-off pieces of periodicals-_Rack, GunHunter _and _Taxidermy Today-_that had been scribbled over into her huge leather bag.

"You okay?" I looked up from where I was zipping and buckling all the little pockets of her tote.

She chewed on her lip and looked very young, and very alone, and very lost for just one second too long for my liking.

Her eyes, those beautiful brown depths, were even bigger with liquid shining over the surface. "C'mere," I took her in a hug, inhaling her scent, feeling her human warmth settle over me like sunshine.

She snuffled into my t-shirt and gave a little laugh, nuzzled my throat and clung to my shoulders.

"I'm gonna make this all right, darlin'." I smoothed down her back and gave a stern talkin'-to to my dick to just keep its wicked thoughts to itself for once.

"I know you will, Eddie." She rubbed her face against the fabric of my shirt one more time and gave me a big squeeze, "I love you so much. I love _everyone._ I… _God, this is so hard._" Her voice grew wobbly, "It's Sue and Mama and the Blacks and Leah and _everyone._"

"Hey," I leaned back and bent my knees so we were face-to-face, "we're not leavin'. And when this is done, you can still work at Mama's and apprentice with Miss Pernell."

She nodded, smiling tentatively.

_And broke my fucking long-gone heart._

"Want me to drive you?"

"Yeah," she exhaled in relief. "_Yes_, I'd really like that."

I hefted her bag and took her hand, and we both recoiled at the harshness of the sunlight. She visored over her eyes and didn't waver for one second more, "Let's take the Bronco, Eddie… _I miss that beast."_

_**~~ll~~**_

Time was both a boon and bane to me.

Get what I want, and get us one step closer to the Volturi.

_Tick tock, clip clop, trip trop…_

Goin' about business as usual, with the vain and vile and villainous Vultures gunning for us.

They were comin' alright, but not before I was finished paying my dues.

I hadn't even needed to break Bella of her ridiculous no-fucking-with-others-present principle, because she was all over me the minute I picked her up from the Tax Shop. Fast and hard and greedy and in the back seat of the Bronco.

She'd been wild and unstoppable, always comin' at me, and hell if I was complaining!

There was an edge to our fucking, because we both understood… doomed time was swooping in on jet-colored wings.

I think my favorite fuckin' was when I'd let Bella shove me down to the porch couch, and she'd knelt between my parted knees. She hadn't let me touch her but told me to watch. _Her fingers grasping me, her lips taking me, her throat swallowin' me._

"Watch me."

I'd had a hard time not blowin' my wad right then.

But not near as hard as when she'd had the sheer audacity to order me to grab her by the hair and fuck her mouth.

I was shaking and… _Fuck! It felt like I was sweatin'_… my muscles jumping, and I slowly lowered her up and down over my cock, a pulsing slick-with-her-saliva dick, her puckered mouth pursing up and down me and her voice a growl demanding I push her lower.

In the end, I'd been pumping up and pulling her down—_tryin' not to break her delicate neck—_thrusting my hips and watching with insane eyes, delirious with toxic cum needling up my dick that flew in and out of her lips. Makin' all kinds of crude comments, she'd licked and teased when I lifted her off only to smile down over my cock and slurp back up, sucking every single bit of venom back that I gave her just like the kitten that got all the cream.

After that, I'd eaten her out… stern and dedicated, because I'd had to wait a full week to get my face planted back at her pussy lest I went all 'vampire' on her. I'd leered at her wonderfully wet, hot heaven, spread her lips, licked my own in advance, and told her, "Make no mistake, Bella, I'm gonna lick you until I've got you all over my face."

It'd been hard to tell who was louder that time… but Newty-toad took off on a furlough, and we didn't see the Rattler for a few days, neither.

_On second thought, maybe the best sex was when Bella had come into my room, dropped her towel and asked, "Wanna fuck?"_

Well, that'd been a rhetorical question, for fuckin' sure.

I'd dimmed the lights and hit the fan and shed my jeans and had her against the wall before I even cared to answer, "_Always with you."_

My knee opened her legs, and her smile had collapsed to my throat in long kisses landing in pecks against my jaw. Lambasting me with her hips, threadin' the silkiness of her cunt up to my prick until my fists ground into the wall and my arms doubled behind her, and I was momentarily halted by the bifurcation tearin' me apart. _Fuck her, love her. Feed from her, protect her. Put a stop to it all; change her and set every-fucking-thing into unstoppable motion._

"Don't you think," Bella's feet hit the floor, and she tore away from under me, draggin' me with her.

"We are here and this is _now, _and don't for one _instant_ reconsider what we have to do." She lowered down to her knees and elbows in front of the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, widened her legs and looked over her shoulder, "We need this, Eddie."

I'd watched it all.

My hands to her tits, my dick to her pussy, her quivering features and lowered lashes and her tongue dashing out and her breath shuddering and the way I sank my lips to her neck and grippedher hips and pounded into her until she'd ended up with her palms flat to the mirror, her gasps spreading vapor trails across the surface, her hair in my face and then… _then_… her breasts smashed against the surface with us both cryin' out and cumming so hard.

_But no, the goddamn best time was the night we were laying side-by-side, quietly murmuring to each other… gently stroking… and I dipped inside to watch Bella arch back… making love… our lips spoke between deep kisses, and my cock hollowed into her. Her nipples strummed my chest and her hips had circled between my hands, and it was erotic and sexy as fuck._

And it was that thing I'd never believed in before. Fucking. Ever.

_Jesus!_ It was _love _watching her orgasm and feeling her wash over me… her face divine and her body dissolving laxly around me and the _thud-thump-thud_ I felt was me cumming—_yeah—_but it was also her heart…_still beating, and always mine._

And now?

Now it was T-minus two days before changing her.

_T-day. Turning, taste, take day._

And I'd wanted to give her somethin'—besides my cock—while she was still copa-fuckin'-cetic, and we were all still kickin' the shit, and she was still simply my girlfriend.

We were all millin' around the porch at The Bluff. Each with our favored drinks in hand… blood, _blood_, branch-bourbon, vodka tonic, brew, _blood_.

Rose dropped the dishtowel she'd been using to clean up a spill on the deck, and the Blair Witch Projector advised, "Looks like company's coming."

Hell, I'd been down this road before… _with Chelsea and El-Fucko_, "That a fact?"

"No," Alice creased the pleats of her crinoline skirt, "It's an Old Wives' Tale."

_Yeah, she was aggravatin' the living shit out of me._

Bubba was jangling those keys and having a hard time not cleaning his ear canals out with 'em, "I'm not pussy-footin' around, we're gonna be late, braw."

I decided to give him a little _recitation_ of my own:

_I love little pussy,  
Her coat is so warm,  
And if I don't hurt her,  
She'll do me no harm.  
So I'll not pull her tail,  
Nor drive her away,  
But pussy and I,  
Very gently will play._

"And that's quite enough, Little Boy Soon-to-be-Blue-Balls," I heard Bella quip.

And then I quit thinkin' altogether… _because that shit just weren't right._

It was a miniskirt, in black, and it was all leather with laces at her upper thighs.

_Blue balls was an understatement._

_Legs_, her legs were endless. _And her feet?_ Fuuuuuck. Heels so high all's I could imagine was the stab of those outrageous things slicing up to my crotch.

"Bella, I don't think-" I began.

Teasingly, she licked her forefinger and slipped it up her thigh, beyond her skirt, and up to the indescribable sinful sex I wanted to be in.

I cleansed that index finger, lingering over her perfume, wantin' nothing more than to destroy her clothes and finger-fuck, tongue-out, and take her right over my dick with a growl, and a maybe… _yeah… _even a smack to her ass.

"Okay, y'all! Let's get this show on the road," and then there was M'Esme.

_In tight jeans and a short leather jacket._

I looked at Carl, and he had the same damn need-to-fuck-mah-woman face on as me.

It was gonna be a long, _hard_ night.

_**~~ll~~**_

On the ride there, with my 'Southern Boyz' emblazoned visor pulled down against the sun that never set, checkin' my sideview for Jizz's Ford and Esme's coupe, I had to listen to Bubba try to one-up me:

_I am a pretty little Dutch girl,  
As pretty as I can be.  
And all the boys in the neighborhood  
Are crazy over me!_

Swiss Miss seemed a little bit pissed at bein' called pretty.

But beneath all the hard candy synergy she put out there, Rose was soft at heart.

She met my eyes in the mirror and nodded before she started necking with Bubba.

Her fingertips designing ever closer to my cock, Bella was so happy. She kept checkin' back, making sure everyone was comfortable.

"I got one," she whispered upon the velvety skin of my ear.

I took both eyes off the road and kissed her silky mouth, "_Hmmmm?"_

"A rhyme. For you."

"Go for it."

_Bobby Shaftoe went to sea,  
Silver buckles on his knee.  
He'll come back and marry me,  
Pretty Bobby Shaftoe._

_Bobby Shaftoe's fine and fair,  
Combing down his auburn hair.  
He's my friend for evermore,  
Pretty Bobby Shaftoe._

I smirked sidelong, "You talkin' bout my shaft?"

"No, I'm calling _you_ pretty_."_

"I'm anything but." The humans I'd killed. The casualties to come…

"Oh, but you _are._"

I merely '_hmmmd' _and looked out through the windshield. Crossing over to me, she laid her cheek against my arm, grazed her fingers down my chest, "_Oh, Eddie_."

There wasn't no valet parking at the Battle of the Bands, so I drove around the block a couple times.

And when we finally got into the Music Pharm in downtown Charleston, it went without sayin' the place was a heaving smash of hot bodies in leather with tattoos and piercings and Mohawks/fauxhawks/dreadlocks and beers running over in plastic cups.

_Yeah, this was just fucking right._

I snagged a round and prowled up behind Bella, shared a drink from my lips to hers and then took into the melee so we were compacted together like the hard coal crushed to diamonds.

_And wouldn't you just know it, _my personal favorite—98.1 ROCK—was co-hosting with 96.9 The Wolf.

_Make that a 69 and I might-could switch sides._

Sure, they were all cover bands, but we didn't give a fuck.

_Shit was good enough._

And so were we, just here, in this place, with most everybody we knew, knockin' back a few and getting it on.

_Deaf Leopard_ took the stage and the lights went from midnight to gray. "It's red light, baby," ever mindful of my color blindness, Bella tried to describe the missin' hue from my spectrum, "A color that can be both soft like sunset, and a hard dash like fresh blood… _I wish you could see it."_

I touched her lips with mine and gathered her ass and took her into the crowd when _Love Bites_ started up.

Every riff had us meeting hips, breathin' heavily, holding on so tight our bodies were sexily fucking in between all these people.

I had my Zippo out, Bubba his Behemoth lighter—_Big-Bigger-BEST—_and all the other twats held up cellphones with screens illuminated by fake lighters.

We didn't so much as dance as combine our flesh… _fucking on the dance floor._

I wanted into her skirt.

I wanted to lift up her shirt and suck on her nipples.

I managed to get her in a dreary corner, and I popped one hand under her top to cup her tit and lick her swollen peaks.

I only vaguely heard Alice taking Jazz away with a sibilant, _'Hey baby.'_

He was totally into the experience: all hippy-music-lovin'-peace-out-high and rockin' into Alice in time to the ballad.

Managing to take Bella's hand and slip her boobs back in her satiny-see-through bra, I gritted my teeth against the impossible desire to fill her up with my cock and my cum. "C'mon."

I stood just far enough away to watch her thighs disappear and reappear with each step, and every time her arched feet met the tacky floor, I was that much closer to graffiti-jizzing the insides of my jeans.

Humid with her heat, my black shortsleeve was like wet paper draped over me.

And my collar was torn by her teeth and fingers.

_Christ, I wished she could make me bleed._

Every one of us felt it in the pit of our stomachs—lit up like fireworks.

The terrible knowing: once I turned Bella, it was make or break time. _We would either all survive this Hades on Earth together, or we would die together, fighting it._

It was _right fucking there._ In the way Major Whitlock got his flintlock out to Alice**.**

It was _there_ with Rose heading south down Bubba.

_There._ Esme and Carl going at it like teenagers rebelling against curfew.

A bottle rocket goin' off.

_Right fucking here._

ZZ Don't-Stop took the stage with ridiculous beards and the perfect friggin' song for my girl.

_She's got legs!_

"Yeah she does," my voice was rusty and lusty. My body movin' every-which-wanton-way to Bella's.

_And wouldn't you know it_… as I brushed my cock against Bella's bush and thought about how to get into her snatch—_natch—_as I thumbed her nipples and fondled the dimples above her ass and kissed her pretty freckles...

_I heard the howls and yips just before I smelled their limburger stench._

I groaned at their turnin' up and ignored the canine cohorts long enough to mark Bella with a nice, vivid hickey. Just a teaser of what I was really gonna do in a couple of days. I sucked her creamy skin up to my lips and plunged with my tongue. Her neck? _Mine_. Her heart. _Mine_. Her sex and tits and soul and mind…

_Only with her giving._

A gross reek like hot brimstone made me let go of Bella to face the humongous new Husky.

I recognized him as Paul. But he weren't quite the same as every other logy loup garou.

His thoughts were all but whitewashed from his brain with the exception of…_Tamara._

That feminine name was all I got from him.

Little Miss Fuckit took a look into his pitiless eyes and thought of _Solomon Grundy, 'Grew worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday. This is the end of Solomon Grundy.'_

He didn't even seem to see Alice, just rushed past her to me, "Where is she?"

_The fuck?_

Simple Simon 'bout tore Paul's arms off in restraining those reckless ready fists.

Bubba groaned and patted the boy's broad head when he started to shiver as if he had the dog in him wantin' to come out, "_Shhh, now._ Don't be startin' that shifting shit. _Shhhh._"

Jake came up and muscled Bubba aside, took over leashing his boy, and explained, "He's mated with one of yours."

_The. Hell?_

"He thinks you know her?"

"Her who? Tamara?"

"Tamara?" John Jacob Jingleheimer Giant Schnauzer repeated, and this was 'Who's On First' roundin' the bases all over agina. He shook his head slowly as if dusting cobwebs outta his mind. "No… _Katrina_."

_But he'd been thinkin' about some babe named Tamara?_

The big vamp toyboy gnashed his not-so-terrible teeth at the mention of Katrina.

_Sure as fuck, he wasn't bred straight from the Acadian gene pool._

"No." I made sure Bella was well behind me and then stepped up to Paul's possessed face, sniffed him again even though his stink made me sick to my stomach. _Dens of wolves. Packs of the animals, their fur longer, shaggier. Old languages. A lustrous apparition in ancient gowns, underground._ And still at the seat of him was that _idea, _that_… she-wolf, _Tamara_._ Tamara warring with his Katrina, whose pale effervescence was love against the deciduous darkness invading him.

Bella rankled when I said this, "I've… uh," _now this wasn't somethin' I really wanted to talk about in front of a festerin' Bella, but it was better than goin' at it with Paul in public,_ "only been with Tanya… don't know Katrina all that well, man." I heard Bella's sharp intake and figgered I'd be in for a good tussle when she finally became dead like me; but that was one fight I'd welcome. _With the thought of make-up sex in mind._ Instinct led me forward. With no other way into his head, I did an Aro and touched the heaving-living-breathing mess in front of me.

_And whaddya' know, it worked with him._

"No. _No._" Into eyes as wide and wild as any devil I'd ever met, I spoke in vespers, "She doesn't do vampires. She's only into wolves." _She was the Denalis' own red-headed stepchild… tales had been told, but I'd always chalked it up to gossip among a family feuding._

There was a gruff cough to my side; Bubba was steppin' from boot-to-boot like he needed a slash. "Well, _um_, actually… there was that one time I was with her, bro."

_Holy shitballs!_ "Not now, Bubba!"

But it was too late, Ghengis Pawn had heard him… and who'd a'thought the Wrath of K-9 was actually more fear-inspirin' than Rose, who was also lookin' ready to throw a _hissy_ fit at another reminder of her lover's 'unbridled' past conquests.

_Fuck's sakes alive._

_She was completely his. And he couldn't live with the thought of Katrina bein' with anyone but him._

This was why Irina had left the Denalis, why she'd sought her own family with Rose; it had offended her so-called sensibilities to be sisters with one who'd fallen in with mongrels.

Why the Louisiana wolves had an alliance with us.

_Why our two factions were meant to be together._

_Katrina was the force, the foretold, the One whose coming had been a curse upon the Lambert family by the bubbling, boiling, burning soucouyant in Dominica:_

"_She will be bound to you as you are to her, and when your eighth son lies with her, my revenge will come…"_

_She was the one who chained us all together._

With another hex. Because, _apparently_, we weren't already dealin' with enough bullshit.

"Fuck!" I swore and that set the Rottweiler off again because he rattled against Jake's caging arms.

Jake murmured, "_Tay Paulie, _let's just blow off some steam tonight."

Paul looked at him as if he was a foreigner, his eyelids lifting to reveal a second sight that winked over his orbs from left to right, vertically eclipsing his eyes.

"C'mon, Wildman." Jake cajoled in a soothing rush of pack patois to get his hackles to flatten the fuck down.

A rotating strobe light hit the dangling metal against his chest. _Dogtags._

I jerked my chin towards the necklace, "Who'd you lose?"

"My Daddy."

I nodded at him in a moment of communion, because who among us hadn't been left behind?

"Who's Tamara?" Bella curled around me.

I shook my head, "No frickin' clue. But she's _in_ him."

"Well, ain't that some shit?" Bubba sidled up, makin' sure the threat had dissipated.

Jizz had his fingers hooked into Alice's waist, "Imprinted on a vampire, sure enough."

"Think of their kids," Rose closed in our circle.

"But they can't-" Bella stopped midsentence. "Y'all can't-" Her mouth dropped open.

"Bear children?" I rubbed my thumb across her plump bottom lip, leaned in to kiss her soundly. "Well, no. Technically, anyway. Don't think there's ever been a match like them though."

She sucked in and exhaled out and wondered aloud, "How can I ever know all of this?"

Right there, standing strong over her, seeing the flush in her cheeks and the uncertainty of her eyes, I crested over those few freckles dotting her pretty nose and assured her, "Everything about you and me is _right._ This is pure," my hand was on her heart and my lips moistened against her throat, "_this is so right._" I kissed her impertinent chin and then her mouth, "This is all we need to know."

"You sure about that?" I felt someone small but mighty give me an ass-slap before sidlin' between me and Bella with a leer and a wink.

Now, if I thought puppy-dog-Paul was bad, I wasn't even _ever_ prepared for Her Royal Houndness.

_Goddamn Leah._

Like a wily little doggy with a chew toy.

And apparently that rawhide was me.

_Shit._

The Alpha Bitch had sniffed us out.

Long jet hair and tight dark jeans and bronzed skin, she was gettin' a lot of attention, until the drooling druggies got a load of Silent Sam with his brawny hand layered over her hips and his near-snarling expression one of 'beat-yo'-ass if you so much as'.

"So, I see you got to our new boy," her timbre was rough and low, demonstratin' that not only was she an all around pain in the ass, she was also top fuckin' dog.

"Oh no you don't, y'all can't blame _me_ for him bein' off in the head," I stood my ground to the little-big woman.

She punched me in the arm and followed up her dead serious frown with a lighthearted laugh, "I know that, man…," she went on to murmur, her eyes slidin' up and down my body, "_pretty, oh-so pretty man._"

Sam cleared his throat, and his shoulders bunched up until Leah caressed his forearm and coyly smiled first at him, and then at me, "I was just fuckin' with ya'." She flicked her curtain of hair back, "Our Paulie's been through the freakin' wars. So we're just trying to take it slow and easy with him."

"Hey, babe," Bella grinned at Leah, and the two women had a long hug that finished with Leah claspin' Bella's arms and smiling, "Hey, my sister. You lucky broad." She raised an eyebrow and fixed her sight at my… _crotch_, "Am I right?"

_Christ, she was like the Andrew Dice Clay of Alpha-chicks._

I felt the heat rising to Bella's cheeks as she acquiesced with a wink, "Pretty much."

"God, he is so fucking hot." The wiseass she-wolf sighed.

I shrugged it off, wasn't like I hadn't been come-on-to before, and besides the way Sam was lookin'? He wanted to shred me into little, tiny, vampire Beggin' Strips**.**

"I know," Bella stretched up on her hot motherfuckin' heels so her skirt lifted and her tits scraped me and… _oh yeah._

I gave her a light kiss beneath her ear and looked around the concrete cave, scratched the back of my neck and pretended I couldn't hear their conversation.

"Holy shit! And bashful, too?" Leah laughed and Sam growled, and someone needed to tell that hulkin' monster to step down before I separated his skull from his spine to create a goddamn wall mounted trophy from it.

_Not like I had eyes for anyone but Bella._

Gliding her fingers between mine, makin' that simple touch shoot to my groin, Bella spun her hips to mine exactly how I liked it, "_Yeah._"

"Well, ain't that adorable."

"I know."

_Now_, I did take offense to that. _Hello-what?_ Big Bad Lethal Killer Vampire! Right here! Not _adorable._

"Don't forget, sparkly, too!" Bella just had to go there.

_Sparkly? _NO! Sweaty Sheen! I was about ten seconds from getting Bella on her knees and placatin' her lips with my dick so she'd stop talkin'.

Leah gasped and rocked unsteadily on her feet while Sammy sank his teeth into his lower lip, "Oh! That's right… does his, _you know-?"_

Before I knew what I was sayin', my mouth opened up and the words came forth—_because I was a helpful sumbitch,_ "My cock?"

"_Oh yeah._" She was all ears, "Does his cock sparkle, too?"

The cock-in-question hoisted from half-mast to full-sail because, _hell_, if they were talkin' to it, it was gonna stand up and say 'Howdy'.

_Yeah, _except… that's when the _real_ company showed.

And how did I know this?

Because the newly arrived did a Moses. With the sweep of his mink coat, every other undulating, drinking, cheering, jeering, leering, person peeled back outta the way.

Exactly like they did for us. When we entered a room.

_Sometimes, the populace understood when they could touch, and when they should shiver as the nightmare walked among them._

And it went without question… _this time?_ I wasn't surprised at all. Because, in one of her blacked–out psychoses, Alice had admitted there would be three.

Eleazar, Chelsea and…

The cartel cunt currently presentin' himself to_ Bella._

Bowing so his shoulder-length, dark hair fell around the place where he held Bella's hand up to his mouth, but not near enough to touch his lips to her skin—_for which he should thank fucking God because if he'd done so I'd have had him thrown back out those doors for a big old barbaric brawl-_, "It is my honor to serve you, Isabella Swan."

I bristled and my eyes went ugly pitch black, a rush of venom completing the killing impulse inside me and making me crouch.

In the distance, someone sent up a wolf-whistle. I whirled to the sound and had a vision of myself destroying every single living breathing human being in the place, leaving a bloody flood in my wake.

Flashing tommy-gun eyes and metallic fingers, he spread his arms so his accessories reappeared. A girl on the left, a boy on the right.

He was everything foul. Everything powerful. And total retro Rat-Pack. From his thug vibe to his pimp threads to the dripping nouveau riche of his unbuttoned, black, silk shirt and the vulgarity of all his gold chains heavy as a cart full of Louis Vuitton luggage, or Van Sleeze & Arpels or what the shit ever.

Swarthy.

_Harsh._

And about a foot and a half shorter than me.

I woulda' laughed at him, but then I'd have to bend over to make sure he heard me.

"_That's right, The One, The Only… The Tracker's in town."_

I scoped out the DJ because no way was this loser-Lothario gettin' an intro.

But no, that was just the conceited sick psycho's own internal how-do.

And I was gonna rip that self-righteous SOB's smirk off his face, but I think I'd start with his kneecaps first—torn from his ligaments—and then work my way up as I divested him of body parts.

_Demetri._

The last in this revolving door of cunts.

"It's kinda fuckin' uncanny how he resembles-" Bubba began

"Scarface." Jizz agreed.

"Yeah," Rose blinked twice and fanned herself to a whole lotta _What the fuck?_

I hated the Company Casanova on sight, on principle alone.

Not to mention his mac daddy get-up and his blow habit, goin' by the way if he sniffed any harder he'd be inhaling his own nostrils outside-in. Aside from her frozen fish face and all around too-perfect unattractiveness, Chelsea had looked halfway normal. Especially compared to the Glam Rocker Nomad Rangers-Victoria and Lauren- dusted like desiccated dung up in Myrtle Beach at the beginning of the summer, and Eazy Sleazy the Greaser planted face first to Cypress knees.

When his long, craven fingers took to his hips, parting the Liberace-style fur that fell flush to the cigarette-carpeted floor, I expected to see a brace of guns holstered there.

But… _nope_.

He was dope.

_I mean, _he had vials strung from his jewelry and lined up along a custom made belt. _Not bullets, not weapons._ Drugs. A fuckin' full-on pharmaceutical industry of drugs. Some in little baggies, too. Maw would like that, probably ask where she could find that specific size of Ziploc.

"Do you want a taste of _my little friend,_ Eddie?"

I laughed harshly, "Nah. I only got one addiction, and she's right here beside me."

Sal Pacino wisely took a step back before he stated, "Indeed, your _tua cantante._ I need to speak with her, _privately._"

_Oh for chrissakes. _

They kept turnin' up like bad pennies, and Bella was already assuring me she'd be fine.

I put myself back inline between Bella and the wannabe Italian Stallion, "Why not Chelsea again? Why not y'all's sidekick, El Schemer?"

He took a mighty sniff from his long, sharp pinky nail, "Because… _ahhhh_… Bella gave the order that Chelsea was not to come back unless told to, _by herself._"

I remembered it, that shit was etched on my brain, Bella tellin' Chattel Chelsea, _'You say what you came to say, and then you fucking leave us. Go back to your Volturi Vipers, and you won't come here again unless I call upon you.'_

Another swipe under his nose and against his gums and Petrie-Dish Demetri reminded us, "And you know how well Eleazar's jaunt to the lowcountry, _more like slow country_, worked out…"

_Fucking beautifully, as I recalled._

"He ever find his other leg?"

"No, he rather resembles your first president… with his prosthetic."

_El-Gimpy the Peg Leg. Excellent._

I was resigned to Bella speakin' on her own with this mucked-up Tony Manero, who was hopin' to 'Stay Alive', but that didn't mean I wasn't gonna mess his face up more.

After I wrapped her completely inside my arms, winding her curls around my wrist… _after_ I hummed over her widow's peak, I whispered more to myself than her, "You're comin' right back."

Then I let her walk away with the latest, _last_, envoy.

She peered back to mouth, _'I love you.'_

"It's only been ten seconds, Eddie," Bubba wrestled me away from the fire door.

_Felt like days, years, decades._

"Drink this," Alice gave me a shot.

I glared at my Timex, _motherfucker must be broken_.

_Five minutes._

I'd give her five minutes.

I stalked from one corner of the stage to the other, talkin' to myself, clenching my fists, tryin' to get a grip.

I almost staggered when I saw her. She came back with a glow_, and it had better not be the fresh-fucked kind_, I thought maniacally when she steadily got closer.

"You're glowin'," I scowled at her.

"I'm perspirin', Eddie." She ran my palm across her damp forehead, "It's hot outside."

_Oh, right._

I aimed my glare at Demetri instead.

"Ease up, Eddie. I'm pledged to honor her, not harm or molest her," he continued mutely with his hands up in front of him innocently, his bracelets jingling as they slid down from his cuffs, _'I'll keep her safe when you can't.'_

That had me jumping on top of him because no one, _NO ONE!, _would ever protect her like I could!

I met his throat and jammed my fists to his shoulder blades with my knuckles like bullets!

A head butt made him fly back with a slow, floaty motion of his fur flappin' like feathers and I stomped. Stomped. _Stomped._

He scrabbled to gather back his test tubes of Big C.

I pulled him up by his neck to the wall.

"_I'm the only one."_

He narrowed his eyes to carbon slits and agreed as much as he could, "Duly noted."

Sinking down low, curling up my back and baring my teeth, I stabbed, "Make no fuckin' mistake on this matter."

I wanted to catapult Demetri through the concert hall that was laid out like a catacomb, wanted to hear him caterwaulin' and bawlin' for mercy, but Bella held onto the tensed steel of my arms, "_Let him go, Eddie. _It's just you and me, remember?_"_

Struggling to calm down, I watched Long Dead D get gone, scramblin' for the exit. **.**

_How many days now?_

Not enough and too many.

Time was escaping.

Speedin' up, racing ahead.

Forty-eight hours and closin' in.

As I took her hand in mine, she folded her fingers into her palm so the wide ring I'd given her shined even more.

She was hidin' something inside that fist.

"What the fuck did he want?"

Bella just shook her head sadly and with a feint of hand, she passed whatever she'd been given over to Leah.

Cupping her face, I closed my eyes and licked across her lips, down into her mouth; the tears wandering from beneath her own tightly-shut lids watered over my fingers, they tasted salty as they streamed into our frantic, ferocious kiss.

I supped all those tears up in apology; our colliding mouths the balm to all the hate, the hurt, the worry.

"So close," she whispered, her heated body causing a fever in mine, the need to take her driving my erection back and forth against her.

"Just two more days," _Christ, I wanted her!_ But I'd wait. I'd be romantic. I'd get her home and get us all naked and we'd fuck for hours with no more friggin' interruptions.

"Good. I'm ready," and she was. She totally was. I saw it in her knowing smile and her observant eyes and the way her posture was true and tall.

_Tuesday._

_Turning._

Belonging_. _

The fuck with this longing bullshit.

I was turned on.

Bella was fine tuned.

We were gonna goddamned do this.

_Finally._

Then, _then,_ Alice cut right across my daydream, "Not quite yet, Eddie."

I came out of my daze to a new commotion, another otherworldly brou-fuckin'-haha.

Paul was fuckin' rabid. Foaming at the mouth. One hundred percent The Wildman he was known to be. _Shivering and ready to shred himself of his humanity and every single person who stood in his way._

Leah, Sam, and Jake had a good hold on him, but the bulwark of his body was breaking free as snarls hurled out of him and saliva flashed from his fangs and his nose morphed into a snout.

Ripping, rippling, _raging_!

_To get to her._

Katrina.

_Fee Fi Fo… Oh, just fuck me now. _

_

* * *

_

~Man alive, Eddie can't catch a break, can he? Poor fella; leave 'im some sugah~

Sooooo, the Paul/Katrina/Tamara triangle were already intro'd in the _Rebelward Without a Cause Outtakes…Indian Red._ *hint hint*

The nursery rhymes? Well, that's all because Eddie likes to rewrite him some dirty little ditties on Farcebook; hopefully he'll post to the blog once he completes his 'collection'. **These rhymes used in this chapter are NOT Eddie's at all; they're all quoted verbatim.**

Most excellent and Fu-King hilarious new DC viddy—Bad Mutha Fucka—by the deliciously twisted and slightly off-her-nut TwifanUK:

www . youtube . com/watch?v=UXNvMML8JK8

**Links to everything, and I mean **_**everything**_**, on my profile here including the blogs, vids, and random-type shit ;). **

And a final note: My _Youth without Age_ AU fic is now complete *smiles*…so go, read it if it takes your fancy!

Cheers, Rie~


	31. Live and Let Die

Love, love love my betas! Thanks to Vanessarae for slappin' this bitch into shape (the story, not me) and to Viola Cornuta for spending endless hours answering all my inane questions, being a fantastic friend, and having her hand always on the rolled up newspaper, ready to swipe one at Eddie, should he get too uppity. *kiss*

Broken-record time: READ the _Rebelward Without a Cause_ outtakes. This time, you should be all caught up with _Sweetgrass and Sassafras _and _Indian Red._ A new outtake is coming real soon-straight from me—and will give y'all a much clearer, scarier picture of Tamara..._and someone else._

Fucking Yay for the fantastic reviews! And, holy hell, the continued enormous onslaught of artwork and vids—y'all are ridiculously talented; I'm completely honored. Eddie sends an, 'Evenin', ladies.' to his women on Fuckbook, and I say cheers to all the dedicated and dirty DWers, 3 3 3.

Disclaimer: Boys, boys, boys….they are mine! Twilight in South Cacky? _Mine._ But of course, the canon story belongs to SM.

_~~Yeah, now let's get back to the baying bayou bloodhounds, the sexy Hard Bard, and…The Battle of the Bands~~_

**Song**

_Live and Let Die_, Guns N' Roses

www . youtube . com/watch?v=6D9vAItORgE

* * *

**Live and Let Die**

All the unhappy horseshit hit the figurative fan the second our boy Paul tried to denude Leah and Jacob of their arms smack dab in the middle of the Music Pharm's Battle of the Bands.

Paul glommin' onto glowing apparition. It weren't hard to dissect the pressure pullin' the humongous Cajun towards Katrina, and she was just as needy in the deep amber glow of her cat-hued eyes, her button-like lips poppin' open on a gasp that ended in a moan. _Fuckin' unnatural imprintin' assholes!_ Jesus Hairy Christ! If I _had_ ever actually believed in the Trinity and all that mystical mumbo jumbo before, I would've had to spit on the goddamn cross right there and then at their sacrilege. I din't need no more plot twists. All I wanted to do was get Bella back to the trailer so I could get me some tail, some tit-fuckin', some lovin' to take us from night to mornin', and probably right on into midday, too.

I trained on the tussle happenin' across this tomb-room. Paul vibratin'. Leah with Sulky Sam and Ja-cub trying to back him out the front entrance because that was just what we needed: a wolf shaggin' in this shit-hole.

In front of all these 'pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders'.

I didn't give a good fuck if the majority of the pop surroundin' us was seemingly cool—and at least half-bagged, probably care of Demetri's drug-dealin'-I had a pit-of-gut feelin' they weren't going to think a mountain-sized, shapeshifting werewolf was a hallucination when they woke up with a hangover tomorrow.

Just as the door made a mausoleum with us inside, Bella whipped her head over to Katrina.

They met eyes in a knowin' clash and skittered apart. A breeze of A/C made a cyclone around Katrina, windin' up her tow-headed tresses until they lashed out.

"She's locked us all in," Bella bore up next to me, ready to battle in any way she could.

Unable to halt her inherited reaction, Leah hissed, "Paleface!"

I couldn't frickin' concentrate for the yips and din and roar comin' from all sides!

The sound garden of voices and thoughts and snarls and growls went mute when my attention turned to Bella. "I want you," I lifted her onto a stool and wished I had shackles to make her remain out of harm's way, _wanted_ a gag to keep her quiet, "to stay."

_Right. Who the fuck was I kiddin'?_

That went down about as well as a slippery shit… _or not._ Who knew? _I'd have to ask Bubba 'bout that._

Not to be handled—at least not like that, although she was going to be finger-fucked, sucked, and truly tongue-tied in about an hour, _no doubt_—Bella sank a shot and met me fair and square, "We are doing this werewolf-_watchamacallit_-vampire thing together."

We faced frickin' Blondie together in this crosshatch of orbiting lives collidin'.

Her isotope introspective eyes were now damn near to colorless, and weren't that just a mind-fuck when paired with the ally-gator vertical lash of Pup's odd orbs.

"Let him go," Katrina begged as she hovered closer and closer to her lover, "_Please._"

"You're just making it worse, all he wants is her," Bella's hands raised to link Katrina on one side, Paul on the other, and an arc of violent lightning raced through her, the ampoules lightin' up her body as she joined the two.

Horrified**,**I readied for impact, intent on breakin' her loose from the current juicing her up as a conduit from vampire to shapeshifter, but I was held still by Paw's huge hand settlin' my boots right back flat to the gummy floor. "Don't touch her," his voice was rough with understanding.

Shakin' so hard my force cracked concrete, I snarled, "Let me go!"

"He can't do that, boy," M'Esme added her powerful hold to his.

_This was not the time to play Ma and Pa Kettle, _"Let _them go, NOW, Bella!"_

Inside the lockdown of my fuckin' foster vamp-parents arms, I watched Bella blaze from within like a Bic lighter, and then Jizz's Little Pony curried up to stroke Paul's quivering jaw, tight as if he was bitin' down on a bit of leather against the screams that wanted to manifest from his electrocution melding him to Katrina, _through Bella_. "You won't change, will you Paul?"

His crazy eyes wheeled around and down, _way down_, to her, "You just need to touch her, right?"

"Fuck man, blink once for 'yes'!" I yelled in his face.

One blink and the bonds were broken, Bella flew back into my arms. Carl and Esme let me go as she sank right into my body, right up into my chest.

The head bangers just thought it had been some awesome lightshow and started to stage dive with a deafenin' unorchestrated volley of '_Yeah man!' _in the dimly lit space.

Even dazed by what she'd done, Bella huddled against me for all of about a minute before she struggled for me to set her down.

A hair-raising kind of spooky wind ruffled around us. It was akin to a timewarp, this was. Wolf impacting with a vampire… _in love, instead of war._

I tried to buffet Bella behind me.

Her elbow to my ribs felt strong as a newborn's…_or a frat boy whose view of primetime porn viewage was being blocked._

Clouds of mist derailed the train of our sight, enveloping Paul and Katrina.

Nearer than I wanted her to be, Bella reached through the writhing mass of nothingness that was the fastness of their arms and legs and hips and kisses and moans to halt with just one touch the depraved encounter**.**

The Earth settled right-side-up

Intensity featured on both their faces. Katrina and Paul sought their getaway through the fire escape.

But Bella's stare landed Paul fair and square on his ass. He jerked back from his cursed love, and the voice comin' out of him wasn't his own. His query was sent in a low, old world inflection, _"What did you give to Leah?_"

Well, wasn't that the million dollar question, and I didn't need to take Poltergeists 101 to understand somethin' was at work inside the cubby-bear.

"Tamara!" Katrina screeched.

Bubba and I used the distraction to barricade all the outside doors.

Maw and Rose went about with trays of shots—_on us, 'course—_to make sure the human concertgoers were all good and liquored up.

Jizzper rounded us supernaturals into a neat and tidy species-wide circle of almost-wolves, and not-little women, and big bad vampires.

Her catty eyes suddenly contained, Katrina came over as sultry and soft, sliding against Paul. And fuckin' _voila_, he gentled like a lapdog to her touch.

"It's okay now, my lover," she frosted across his cheek, swept over his lips, and leaned in close with a tease of her skin.

Paul boot-jacked back and shuddered. His spine tore up and then his hackles lay down.

The dog seemingly trained, I needed to know the poop-scoop this bitch I kept hearin' about, "Tamara?"

Instead of puttin' her cards on the table-because, just like all the other hoary-haired harlots in her family, she liked to toy with the menfolk a bit—Katrina kicked the seat out from under my ass.

Icy-eyed, the Denali do-er turned her head to us like the Exorcist done inhabited her body, "Why, hello there, Eddie." Her smile was split wide, and her fingers never left their work-up over the Wildman's wanting body, "I'll tell Tanya you said 'hi', shall I?"

_Dammit! Her too?_

"Well, here I thought you were on exile from the other siren shaft-teasers."

"Come on now, _darlin'_, we didn't tease you, did we? As I _recall_, we all put out," Katrina caged Paul as his raw hide went ballistic and near beast, and Bella

weren't no better.

"_Wait._ Wait!" Bella's inflection rose and rose, as did her color, her tits and her height on those pretty-friggin-tippy-toe heels, "You were in a _threesome?_"

_Oh my achin' ass._ All's I wanted was more tunes, the info on Tamara, maybe some Wild Turkey and then Bella's snatch to warsh it all down. I shuffled back and forth with my hand rubbin' the ever-sore growing soft spot that had been my heart,and tried to bring her closer to me.

"More like foursome, right braw?" Bubba's eyes screwed up tight, and I saw the scene like it was an XXX clip: waxen limbs, open legs, a helluva lot of mouths suckin'. It'd been Two Guys and a Lotta Fuckin'. _Now it felt a funeral cortège._ And it was me on the caisson, as Emmett went on… _and on, _"_Shewee_! Make that a fivesome, bro!" He held his fist out for a bump, and I-

The answerin' punch back sent him flailin' and sailin'… _and it hadn't come from me_. Rose blew across her knuckles like they were a Colt 45's before she stomped over to Bubba's lax body, "You wanna try that again, Skipper?"

The dope-on-a-rope got stars in his eyes, "God_damn_, woman!"

He continued with his love-daze that his woman'd just laid him out like a corpse while Rose groused, "_Like I need to hear about…"_

After high-fiving Rose, Bella slapped me.

"Bella, you knew I wasn't no fucking saint before you," I tried to make her lift her head up.

Wished I hadn't.

Because when she did her eyes were glorious with rage; and the TNT-level explosives we'd already witnessed went atmospheric A-bomb…_Bella-style._

Her scratches were not the least bit damaging, but her scathing tone tore me in two, "I know _exactly_ who you are, Eddie. And this," she waved wildly about, "ain't it." With her fingers in fists that brought me so goddamn close I expected her to spit in my face, "_I know who you are now._ And I do _not_ want to hear about your dick-dealin', cock-walkin', frigid-bitch-fucking, _succubi-suckin'_ anymore. _You got it?_"

And I definitely didn't expect what came next… instead of a blow, there was the inhale of her breath, the beat of her heart calming from clamor to quiet, and her lips relaxin', lilting up to mine, "_You are mine._"

Easily, I shoved out every other thought to divide her mouth with my tongue, her chin in my hand, her lips moist and pouty and pretty and… _hmmmm._

"Got it," I grabbed her ass and went right back at her. I turned her to the wall, the one we'd humped against earlier, and made sure her legs spread over mine and her cunt got all swolled up on the rigid muscles of my jean-clad thigh.

Braiding into my hair and branding my scalp, Bella really triggered my cock from fully loaded to about to blow.

"You wanna fuck me here?" Her eyebrow rose, her lips were engorged, her pussy a dinin' invitation.

"Fuckin' stupid question, darlin'."

In the background… _FUCK!_... there was Paul wheedling, "Why are you looking at me like that?" with the Prognostic Pygmy needling.

With a heavy sigh and run-on grumble of foul language, I smoothed and straightened Bella's clothes. Took a good look around to make sure no other fucker had gotten a bead on her breasts or ass or legs or pussy or…

"I think you got me covered, baby," she did up the top button of my jeans, raspin' a knuckle back down my erection. "Go on, now."

I smirked and entered the ring-around-the-posers, because if Tinker-Hell was in a hecklin' mood, I could definitely get on board with the Bad Fairy.

"You're goin' all multicultural, dude," I insulted, "_that's_ what she's lookin' at."

"Not like you haven't done them." Paul took a stand.

"And you wished you had-" I began until Bella hissed.

"Besides," I continued lowly, "_they're my kind_."

"_She_ isn't." He turned his head. Bella was one fiery woman, ready to kick and kill… _make fuckin' peace where it was warranted._ Right now? Looked like she wanted my head—_possibly the other one, too —_on a platter.

I got in his face but not close enough so the slobber from his gob could get on me. And I recognized what I saw in his expression—_an animal. Just like me._ We could go from protecting to brutal with little more than a threat, an insult, or jealousy. _Monsters._ "Cross breedins not on the menu."

His voice fought out, "But humans are okay?" I walked away from him. He stalked, "The women you've had, _that's all fucking fine? _And Bella, that's all _sanguine?_"

"Well, _yeah_," Jesus Bevis, it was _Bella._ "_She_ is." Not that she was meant for this motherfuckin' mortal coil for much longer. But shee-it, even as a human being, Bella'd made me the luckiest sumbitch, dead _or_ alive.

"So what about those kills?"

"Who have you been talkin' to?"

"Nobody you need to know about."

"Least I ain't ever done the meaty treaty with a _she-wolf,_"_fuckin' boot-lickin', tail thumpin', leg-humpin' hound._

Leah chimed in, "Oh, baby, you are _so _missing out. Once you go Best in Show, you never go human ho… _no offense to my girl here._"

Bella yelled, "Leah!"

"_What?_ Girl can wet-dream."

"Sam," Bella appealed to the big man to silence his dam, dame, _she-bitch,_ whatever.

First of all, _she was my girl, goddamutt, _and, secondly, a ho she wasn't, "She was pure, a virgin, _untouched _when-"

Jacob cut in with an unending laugh, "She may have been a virgin, but untouched she was not. Hells, Bella, you never told him about that time we-"

"JACOB!"

_The FUCK?_ I was gonna gut him and feed him his own intestines while they were still steamin' and streaming like a sausage-linked ribbon from his innards.

Toe-to-toe and nose-to-snout and all around pissed off, we met our pseudo friends and were fast on the course to makin' eternal enemies just like the Volturi wanted us to when Maw dimmed our roar with an unladylike shout, "BOYS! _Girls._ Vamps, _tramps_," she aimed at Katrina with that one, "She-wolves, _dogs,_" she sighed and gave in, "_whatever."_

Leah popped up in the quiet, "Anywho, I'm sure Kate can back me up on the sexual prowess of our kind. Right, Sister?"

All eyes stapled to Katrina, whose heart-shaped, pale-as-snow-drifts face fell like a big, fat, lump of melting ice, and her tinsel-colored hair shivered, "We never fully finished…"

_Yeah, that was the thing. Imprinting was the bind, but fucking was the glimmer-work that made the carnal chimeras take true hold of one another. And they hadn't consummated their 'relationships' yet. _

Anticipation infected all of us as Paul and Katrina got all hot under the collar for each other.

_As if I needed any help bein' horny._

Their longing leap-frogged from pair to pair.

"Ho-shit! He ain't even been with her yet?" Bubba murmured between lip-suckin' Rose to within an inch of her non-life with the rope of her braid held inside his toughened knuckles.

I curled over in a tight knot of pleasurable, painful, _doggamned_ torment. My cock so filled with a poisonous rush, I had to make like a statue and clamp down completely, or else I was gonna unleash the frickin' bottle rocket of cum from my balls and probably tear a skylight in the roof.

_Doomed. We were doomed._ By fuckin' desire?

"We need to know why Katrina's here," hardly movin' my lips because if I opened my mouth, my hips would shift, and I'd rip Bella's clothes off and be on top of her in no-seconds flat.

'Course that seductive shit from Paul to Katrina zoomed from me to Jizz and that was just one more I-gotta-blast-my-balls-now apocalyptic message that needed no fuckin' decodin', because his eyes slammed shut and a concussive _crack_ of empath eroticism flashed from him in that groking thing he always had shoved in his back pocket, next to his flask and toothpicks.

Bubba looked at Rose and didn't so much as prowl as hunt his hands down her shirt to her tits, tearin' the thing into confetti to get to her chest.

Maw made off with her leather jacket and gave a healthy _smack_ to Carl's ass that made him flinch and then demanded raunchily, "I want you to felch me, Carl."

_FELCH?_ The fuck?

Bella was less up in arms than all _over_ my body like a heated blanket. Lips, tits, and… _Batibat take me_, she spat on her palm and tripped her hand down my chest, resting over my healthy head. I begged, "Don't take your clothes off, _please._"

The smile on her half-moon lips was like the loom of her weft-work hips, and I hollered at the feel of Bella batting away my hands, drippin' over my stomach, thumbing my groin and getting' a full-on face-to-face with my cock.

Katrina and Paul were doling the _dogmatic _pneumatic.

A heathenish den of iniquity all around had lush sounds permeating. Flesh feasting after a fast… the spill-off from Jizz was vampire viral… it Ebola'd _everyone._

This all reminded me of that _other_ bogus, bad, fang-bang movie with its scene in a club, snaking crowds of legs and arms and lips and tits and then the rainshower of blood, "What was it?" I garbled out against Bella's beautiful boobs, coilin' my tongue to a hot taut nipple, thumb-drumming the other.

She set to work on the tendon of my throat, "_Mmmm, Blade_, baby."

"Might-could've been _'Blade II',_ Junior had his larcenous Lilith laid out on the bar.

"What? There was a," I stopped to groan with Bella's fingers like a cobra tamer's takin' my cock out of the ratty-jean basket pouched out from my prick, "_sequel?_"

She beckoned and I walked softly with my big stick, she licked her lips, looked up, and I pushed my throbbin' head between her lips, "_Wait._" A sliver of saliva connected us, "You liked _Blade_?"

Winding back over my cock with a hearty suck, she slurped off and wiped her chin, "Kind of had a thing for Stephen Dorff… besides, vampires are hot."

"Technically, we're cold… _fuckin' shit!_" She went down on me again, all the way I could see my cock cording inside her mouth and half down her throat, _"oh shit, don't stop doin-"_

'Course she did just that, _stopped._ "Don't care what you say, _you are so hot._"

_Of course_ with the Alpha pack mind-meldy shit them Alsatians were all affected by the clawing lust too, and… and… _and…_

"We need to get the fuck out of here," I chewed through my words and my insane craving to just _fuck_ Bella right there, standing, driving, poundin' out!

I held her away with one hand and shifted my eyes all over the place, silently beggin' her to _not suck my cock?_ What the hell? Had the sky fallen?

_Shit. Wolves, vampires, humans… public venue._

Fucking… _so much fucking._

_CUNT!_

Exit strategies. Concentrate. _Cuntcentrate?_ No, _no!_

Go further downtown, uptown, the parkin' garage, get everyone out, find out the meanin' of Katrina's appearance…

The houselights went black-out and blinkered back on high beam.

It weren't near closin' time so…

_Carl._

Good man.

Money might not buy you love, but a fat wad of greenbacks sure came in handy when it came to greasin' palms.

The Music Pharm was farmed out of civilian bodies, blinking and lurching, taking their partied-down asses to other clubs.

Locked up, with us all inside.

Soon as the lights had cut off and on, the obscene overture was disconnected.

"I ain't fuckin' pow-wowing, so let's get this show on the road because I want to go home and fuck mah woman," I glared at Katty-Rina.

"You kiss your M'Esme with that mouth," her nuclear eyes unsettled me.

"Usually I warsh it out first," Maw interceded. Like my mouth was filthier than hers, what with her new felchin' fetish.

_I was so sick of this meet and greet bullshit._ I made sure Bella was beside me, cradled under my arm, tucked into my side, my fingers keying down her back to her flaring hips.

Unpredictable Paul, the Ultimate Mastiff, rounded his forearms so they doubled over Katrina's middle. A disturbance to the air ruffled out from the couple.

Makin' love morphed to menace then stitched down to mates sittin' side-by-side… _in a fuckin' love-in like circle_: Sam and Leah, Rose to Bubba, and the runt of the litter, Alice, next to Jizz. Carl against Maw. Me and my Bella. Jacob… _the Loner Wolf._

"Why're you here?" I pulled Bella's feet into my lap, unlaced her boner-fied shoes, tickled her soles and pressed into her arches so her back bowed, her hips tucked, her breath sucked.

"To warn you about Tamara," she admitted to the Wildman's mind snapping shut like a bear-trap.

_She couldn't have just said that before throwin' me to the… wolves, as well as my woman? _

Still as a one of the statues at Mepkin before I'd terrorized the non-Popish palace, Paulie hardly breathed, and his face showed not one ounce of emotion. Just planes of… _nothin' doin'._

Dipping her toes under my thighs just like she'd done the first time I'd touched her pussy in the Bronco after our first date to the Movies on Marion Square, Bella punched forward, "And Tamara is?"

Katrina spat as if a bad taste infected her mouth, "_European._" The derogatory manner of her inflection implied there was nothin' worse.

"And?"

"A wolf."

The A-team started to get wild with howls, but Leah held up her hand to muzzle the roar, "So?"

Katrina's eyes licked golden in the middle, and glowed with blue flames around the edges. She was on her knees, crawlin' forward and possessified, "True Blueblood, fully howl-at-the-moon-werewolf."

Brick and concrete and the stink of spilled beers and mashed cigs and… _a wickedly good dose of perfume evapped up right when the lights halo'd down. _

Bella.

The scent was hers. Some kind of eerie connection realized.

Katrina nodded, "That's right, _Isabella_."

"So?" I _goddamn_ needed to know!

"You know the loup garou dislike vampires?" Paul and Leah made small denials, but they weren't capable of pushing away their genetic bent to fight-us-fuckers-off.

I sat back on my ass, Bella's aura a curtain around me, my thoughts curtailed, "_And?"_

"Tamara wants to destroy us all." She waved out her flaxen-flames, "No prisoners. _Death._ And there won't be any deals made."

"What does she want?" Maw held her hands out to us all, a Mother Fuckin' Hen gatherin' her young'uns.

"My Paul." The instant she touched him again, he came back to life from his paralyzed state, and perspiration doubled with his heavy respiration, "_Katrina!"_

She clothed him tight, took his fever away. "Tamara thinks he's her boy. _But she is wrong."_ A battlement of bronze bled away her irises, "_He belongs to me._"

_There was more, I knew it._ "_And_?" My nostrils flared and I readied to get Bella right the fuck outta the place.

"She's not all that fond of Isabella. I don't know who she belongs to, but she is pure bred, _trained._ And she either has a master, _or a mistress_, and it appears that person's carrying a torch for Bella_._"

There was a lick of an image I fished in from Paul… _dark and silken, black as coal in her clothin', night-hard in her heart._

"Well, she ain't no oil paintin', whoever _she_ is," I pronounced and then stood, wardin' Bella always.

This wasn't a worry my woman needed to think about right now.

"We're heading out." I broke through the chains and lifted Bella up in my arms.

"Wait!"

"What?"

She nodded over my shoulder.

Katrina and Paul were obviously setting out to steam that sweat lodge off the Savannah Highway.

Leah came up to check on Bella just as I was seating her into the Bronco.

"So, you're cool with them… _her?"_ I motioned towards Hurricane Katrina.

"Yeah, true love, ain't it?"

"Thought it was imprinting."

Taciturn as a totem pole, Sam spoke woodenly, "True love, imprinting, same thing."

_He needed to loosen up and take the peace pipe out of his hole._

"Anyways, we're down with the vamps. 'Cept that camp cunt who wants to ass-fuck you… no one should defile your pretty glutes, that'd be a travesty of the tush variety." Leah looked way too closely at my ass and formed a considerable frown, then a wicked grin, "Although, Bella, you do know about the release from a good prostate massage, right?"

_Oh, Jesus, not goin' there. _

"Oh, I got nothin' against the gays neither, no harm intended, Butthole Surfer," Leah winged her hair back and closed the door, crossed her arms to ingest Jizz and the Nuthin'-Nightingale.

"He's not into that anymore," Mini-Meddler deemed.

"Yeah, right, _and I'm an Omega_." The top-ranked toothy bitch went on, "Listen Missus, just cuz he's sinkin' dink in your Fortune-Telling 500 Pussy don't mean he's not thinkin' about getting 'nads deep in another brother's outhouse."

With that, I shut the cab door and gunned my engine, rainin' them in exhaust fumes.

A/C on, windows down, tunes off.

We crossed the bridge over the Cooper and slowed over Johnnie Dodds Boulevard.

I caressed Bella's leg until she turned to me.

"I'm worried about this Tamara."

_Goddamer!_ Our final night had been all fucked up, and I'd just wanted her to feel good.

A wrist over the steering wheel and payin' way more attention to her than the road, I made sure my free hand was soft but sure, firm but gentle, just like my lips at her neck and then up to her mouth, "You don't need to be."

While she stayed with me, matchin' my tongue, taking my wrist into her hands, widening her legs and gettin' into our kiss, she questioned, "How do you know that?"

"She's benched for now, Bella," I rapped my head then hit the horn when a cunt cut across in front of me.

I kept my palm on her leg, my eyes on her profile. I watched her lips dice from concerned to chimerical to carnal.

When she hit complete lustfulness, she came over to me, stroked me, unzipped me, unbuttoned me, and laughed while streetlamps and route signs zoomed past.

Each mile was her mouth sucking my cock.

My hips hittin' up.

One hand tangled in her hair.

The road went dark the farther we got to the outskirts.

Her skirt was over her hips.

My fingers felt the soft, wet, silk inside.

Her moan lit me up, her ass pressed back, and we came with my heel crashin' the clutch, the truck spinning sideways on the soft shoulder just outside Cainwhore's town limits.

Satisfied, Bella relaxed right back, hooking an eyebrow to me, "Thought you could control yourself."

_Hell, I had no power to resist her even when she was fully clothed, buckled up, and mindin' her own p's and q's. _I didn't even bother to make an excuse, "Never with you."

At the turn-off to Luxury Hollows, a faded pickup put-putted by with the bumper sticker highlighted by the one and only taillight: 'Pluff Mud: You never forget your first time.'

_Reckon the same could be said of turnin' your one true love into an immortal._

_~~ll~~_

When we got home, I shut the door and led the way to the kitchen, "Hungry?"

She bit down on her bottom lip and shook her head, her eyes takin' a ride all over my body.

I inhaled and shut the fridge door with a rattle and squeak.

"Thirsty?" I walked in a wide circle around Bella, closin' in on the circumference with each pass, just the bass of my voice hittin' her, here and there… the touch of my breath and maybe a brush of my fingers to her skirt, her waist, her neck.

Her tits came up and down in a fast rhythm, her nipples made aroused points inside her tanktop. When I filched one of the laces right out of her skirt in the blink of an eye, leavin' two halves of leather leaping open over her curvaceous thigh, she swung to me, "No."

"Tired, perhaps?" Knees met floor and finger stroked up her legs, pushin' the last half of her skirt above her hips. A dunk down and back up with my mouth showin' me the way, I slowly made for her saturated center. But I held off, waitin' for her answer.

"Sleep's over_rated,_" she ended on a squeal when my longue lapped right the fuck over her lacey panties, from seam to seam, lips to clit.

I worried my teeth over that swollen pearl and murmured, "I think so, too."

Shreds of clothes and my belt buckle takin' a bite out of skin, jeans to my thighs, her top torn off, my face in her tits and hers thrown back, we made it as far as the hall.

Hookin' her waist, ripping her danglin' skirt, spreading her legs and pushing her knees up to her knockers. I posed her toes on my hips and lunged right up inside to a concussive repeat of both our, _"Fuck, fuck, YES!"_

The walls groaned, and, _yeah_, the DW was rockin' off its blocks.

I banged my forearm to the wall and hauled Bella to me with my other arm a barrel strap around her waist so the closeness between us was air-fuckin'-tight.

"Uh, uh… _hmmmm_. Uh, _yes, uh YES yes!"_

I grunted with her moans and pressed my heels to floor, my cock so far up inside her I coulda goddamn wept for the deep feel of her clamping cunt cummin' all over me in streaks of strength clenchin', releasing, starting and rollin' all over my cock!

"Fucking GOD yes Eddie, baby, _oh god-Eddie!_"

She finished off with a lowdown and dirty laugh as I filled her again, and again, _and fuckin'… ahhhhh-again_ until my seed and her wetness spilled out and rivered onto our thighs, matting us together.

_Mated._

"Somethin' funny?" I asked, breathin' in stuttering gunshots and still kickin' inside of her.

"_Oh, oh… aaahhhh. Holy shit!"_ She slammed down on me hard and arched up and away and cried as another wave lashed out inside her.

Soon as I'd carried her to my bed, tried to straighten the chenille spread over her and me, I asked again, "So, _funny_?"

"We are totally going to ruin this place when I'm a vampire."

"'S'okay, I bought another one 'cross the way, L'isiana moved last week."

She giggled again, "You got it all worked out."

_No, I didn't. I really didn't._ Just me and her. And that reminded me, "You wanna tell me what the fuck that was between you and Paul and Katrina?" _I didn't mention the whole 'threesome' thing._

She was all wide awake then, "Why?" Tapering her tongue to the slit lips on the tip of my dick, she grinned deviously, "You want me to shock your cock?"

My head said 'No', but my _head_ wagged its tail and slapped against my abs and then up to her lips in an obvious 'Fuck YES, I do!'

"Hmmm," her hands ran over my balls and back up my cock, trailing threads of extreme need from my spine to my sac to my suck-the-fuck shaft. "I just created a path connecting them." She quirked and eyebrow, and paved from my scrot to my cock and back again, _with her tongue._

"Just like that?" I groaned and belted my dick up into the side of her mouth, hittin' the smooth inside of her cheek.

She snapped back, "Just," she licked right under my satchel. "Like," Bella crawled closer until her nose was shoved to the base of my prick. "That," she hovered for a second, smilin' hugely when my cock swung over to slap against her lips.

And then she was down on me and my thighs shivered, my head and hands and feet and back annihilated the beddin' with the heading I was getting.

Holdin' off as long as I could, I ended up sprayin' inside her mouth, over her face and down to her belly.

Her laugh was a throaty, "You _kinky_ man!"

_Christ_, I gasped and tore up a corner of sheet to wipe her off, but Bella just put her hand up, "Let me."

Her fingers gathered my cum, her tongue came out to alight those drops upon the flesh of her lips and mouth.

_My fuckin' God._

I mean, that right there would have me believin' in heaven, not to mention what she'd just done to my rod.

An incredible human lightness, feather-like, Bella laid half over me.

Takin' in her visage, watchin' each breath fill her chest, I snagged Bella closer. Hushing, "You gonna miss this?"

Rubbin' circles up and down her back, occasionally flirtin' with the plumped out sides of her boobs, I… _fuck._ I really just wanted her to be okay.

"Yes," her resplendent eyes blinked, her cute and cum-worthy mouth opened over a yawn.

I withheld the fact I wanted to nail her again. I kept up my massage, "I've liked this. Sleepin' with you."

Like a courtesan, she just slid a little bit lower and was instantly upon me, and it was the simplest, sexiest thing in all the friggin' world, "Me, too."

I just had to add my thumb to her pulse-pussy-point, just had to have at her nipples, _just had to add, _"I ain't goin' soft, you know."

A screaming orgasm immobilized me.

"Not even possible!" Bella came apart, and we put each other back together, after long, lapsin' minutes.

"You are _all_ man, to me."

I nodded and rolled over, lettin' her beautiful, soft boobs cushion my cheek.

My shoulders and chest alone took up two masses of her body, but still I laid on top of her, nuzzlin' at her nips.

Suffocatin' Bella under me was ultimately a bad idea, no matter how good she felt—as we had other plans for her demise-so I returned to my side, matched us like spoons, whispered, "We can still do this sleep-thing… afterwards."

"I'd like that, Eddie."

_~~ll~~_

Final shift at Mama's.

This was the day of the dead.

And she had to work the lunch rush.

Asshole's brunch.

"_You don't have to come."_

"_I want to, I swear I won't interfere," …much._

There was to be no fanfare, at all, because Bella had been adamant.

Just me and Bubba in the back booth on this bittersweet moment.

He set up the checkerboard while I went behind the counter to tie Bella's apron on… I made a doubly big bow, 'case she got loose.

_Loved that woman with a wide sash over her ass._

Now, I'd tried to shake Bubs off, but he was akin to a Chihuahua, and unlikely to unhitch from my leg; so he shuffleboarded the play pieces and got in his order of human-made fare.

A stank ranked up from the heapin' plates in front of him.

"You and your _amuse douche."_

"It's _amuse bouche_, you jock-jerker-offer." He forked some grossness around and wafted the shit-like stink up to his face; he was turnin' into a regular Carl-like DVM/Doctor of Vampire Munchieswith this addition to his addictions.

"That's Jock Jerker Officer, to you, and I meant what I said, _Cadet Queefcake."_

"Nothin' wrong with a furry fart, braw."

"Loose lips sink shafts, _dude._"

He waved his fork in my face, and it was drippin' with syrupy blue-black goop, "Blackberry cobbler?"

"Rather have some hairy pie."

"Bare snatch has its own attributes."

"'Natch," I agreed, although I liked to slip my fingers all around Bella's little crown of hair before tuckin' into her smooth, nude lips. "Just say no to the dingleberry hatch though, bro."

"_Jizzper_." We chuckled for a bit until a throat cleared behind me.

"You boys mind if I join ya?"

"Uh, not at all, Sir," My stomach curdled, but my spine straightened, and for damn certain Maw woulda' been proud of my manners for a change. "Pull up a chair, Sheriff." _Sheriff Schadenfreude._

Bella ambled past, a tray balanced in the air, three beer bottles juggled in her other hand, her jugs lookin' right perky in that tiny shirt. I made my eyes stray to the table's edge and pulled down some PBR. Oglin' his daughter's tits the eve of her becoming a vampire-under my own tutelage-would probably make Pop-pop burst a blood vessel.

Her feet stopped and the trio of brews landed on our table with her surprised, "Dad!" fallin' from her lips. And then a following warnin', "_Dad. Eddie."_

We both put our hands up, "Behavin'!" Man, she'd make a mean policewoman, which put me in mind of a short, tight, blue uniform, jaunty cap, fishnet stockings, and handcuffs.

_And my nightstick… I could just hear her now, "Reportin' for duty, Officer Eddie."_

My salacious reverie was broken by, "What are you doing here, Dad?"

"Just wanted to see my baby girl." He pulled out a hankie and made a show of 'dabbin' dust' from his eyes, the rough, gruff, sentimental old fucker.

_My Girl, goddamnit._

"Gimme a second," Bella delivered the order and came back to sit on Charlie's lap, "Daddy, I'm real glad to see you."

_Shit, sit in my lap, Bella! Who's your daddy?_

I cracked my knuckles in slow motion so no one but Bubba could hear the snaps… oh, and Mama, too. She ambled over my mind with a, "You mind yo' bus'ness, boy. He just wanna say goodbye."

More with the Chief and his handkerchief and those 'dust motes and allergies', and he turned his back on me and Em to whisper, "I'm gonna see you again, right?"

Bella gave a little sniffle and her shoulders bent forward, but she didn't sob. She peered over at me and focused on her father with a false smile, fake brightness, "Of course, Dad."

_Ah, Hell._

"I love you," she stood, kissed his rugged cheek, held onto him for longer than I'd ever seen. Then she rounded the four-top and started for the back, thinkin' I couldn't see the waterfall of her tears, that I didn't hear the wrackin' of her breaths.

Makin' a grab for her hand, I didn't try to stop her but just gave a squeeze before our clasp was broken and she disappeared with Mama B.'s headshake gluing me in place.

Bubba broke the ice with, "Nice to see you two bonding." He was all eyes, and ears, like fuckin' Dum-bro. _Right, he was waiting for a Jerry Springer-style family reunion, complete with punches thrown and chairs busted up and insults along the lines of__**, **__'You fucked my wife's sister's daughter's best friend! Alls I did was let your poker buddies gang bang me! Waddya' mean, you want a divorce?'_

"So, what you got planned for the big day?" Charles was actin' like my changing Bella was the royal event of the year.

"Nothin' special," I mumbled… _couldn't tell him I was gonna' make slow love to her then suck her lifeforce from her as gently as possible. Or that I was plannin' on sitting beside her for the three treacherous days it'd take for her body to embalm her from the inside out with marrow-incarceratin' flames blazing apart every single one of her bones._

He nodded, gulped, dead-eyed me, "I'm bankin' on you, Son."

I was saved from the ball-bustin' by a squawk of his walkie-talkie, "_This is Dispatch. We have a 10-31 in progress at Mrs. Capper's Outdoor Sundries. Perp tryin' to get away with a truckload of them Roamin' Gnomes." _

_Probably Alice out on her Peddler's Prowl._

"10-4, Dispatch. Poppa Swan headed to the scene." _Poppa Swan?_

Adjusting his khakis, Boss Swan gave me my final probation, "You be in touch, _boy._"

He left, and a Diseased-Dick Dumbass swaggered in. Cowboy hat, flannel shirt, dusty jeans, face pitted like the surface of the moon from a bout with prepubescent acne.

Lanky hair, greasy fingers, and he was searchin' for Bella.

_He seriously wanted me to sign his DOA. _

Obliviously, he went right up to the bar, planted his ass and tapped until Caleb appeared. "Bella around?"

Caleb glanced at me and started to warn the skunky-smellin', hick fuck, "Miss Bella's not in today, and she'll be off for a few weeks, Randy."

_I was 'bout to get real handsy with Randy._

"What you mean, boy? I can smell her from here." He leaned on back, stretched on over and aimed his twitchy eyes on the saloon door to the back-of-joint.

"I tol' you, she ain't here."

"Don't be gettin' uppity with me, boy." Randy hitched up his pants and got to his feet, he began to make a move towards the 'Employees Only' area, but I got there way before him.

He tried to shove me aside.

_Big Fuckin' Mistake._

"How long you been a regular?" I asked, all lazy and friendly like.

"Coupla months," he swore underbreath, "Whatsit to you?"

"You like Miss Bella?"

"Oh yeah, what's not to like? Legs like that, tits that bounce," he spat some baccy juice into his palm and rubbed the brown balm like he was gettin' ready to yank one off over her… _like he'd done just that a hundred times before._

Before Bubba could yell, "Scat!" I had that stinkin' polecat out the back door and down on the dirt with his arms almost out of their sockets, "Here's the thing, _Randy_. Bella's my woman." I made sure to muffle his mouth with my fist first and then a shovel of grit. "You talk about her tits? I'm gonna know. _You think about her tits, I'm going to know._ You come sniffin' around her again? I will kill you."

An unmanly pile of bones beneath me, he nodded as much as he could with my hand pushin' his skull into the ground. "P. Fucking S., don't be treatin' my man Caleb with anything less than respect."

I leapt up and _spat_ on him. Then _rubbed_ it in a little bit more, "You know, brickin' it in your big boy pants? Not cool. Just because you got a little talkin' to from the resident rebel vampire."

Leavin' the hurting mess with a turd in his pants sobbing on the earth, I heard a couple of loud claps, saw Caleb holdin' the door open to me, "She'll see you now."

I went to the water pump first. Seein' my girl after fightin' for her honor? I was gonna' get cleaned up first.

Escorted inside, like I was havin' a regal audience, cold spring water trickled down my collar.

"You kill him?" Bella asked.

"Not quite."

In the back room, with the smoke of pork turning, bacon hangin', rice in vats, Mama Brown placed her deep grape hands on Bella and her twinklin' eyes went right through my being, "Now you listen here, Lil' Momma." Bella stood stock still. "You g'on come on back."

Caleb hushed, "Mama's the Gullah Queen."

_Well shoot. This was an imperial invocation after all. _

"The _wudu_ ain't gonna git you, my girl." Mama Brown blended all three of our hands together, weavin' our fingers like the reeds of sweetgrass in a manner that was similar to what Bella'd done with Paul and Katrina, "an I'm g'on be right by your side. Right at the end," she broke us apart with a soft incorporeal _whoosh_ then her and Caleb called up with voices and hands and bodies ringin' round and round, shaking the rafters, quaking the floor, spinning up protection and their own prayers.

The quiet beyond was… _peaceful._ Calm.

A throaty laugh, and an enormous hug had Bella suffocatin' inside Mama's trunk-sized bosom. She put her hands to her majestic hips under the most hideous housedress I ever did see, "Now, my l'il gal, you gonna finish up your shift, or take on off with yo man?"

"Eddie."

Mama opened the back door. Caleb handed me a cold one, "You feel that, Mister Eddie?"

"It's just Eddie." And I had felt that. "Yep."

"Mama's got y'all's back now."

String Bean went to the cookhouse, but not before he placed his raisin eyes to mine, "And don't you forget about Miss Rose too."

"Where to, darlin'?" I tossed my empty to the blue bin.

"Isle of Palms."

I nodded, "Good choice. Your Bronco awaits." I stopped short, "You wanna' drive?"

"Nah," she flushed with a warmth I could feel, "I like watchin' you."

Swallowing, I squired her up into the cab with a reassurance, "We're gonna take our time tonight, Bella."

_~~ll~~_

I did my best to give her some solitude. Waiting on the upper knoll of the boardwalk, I kept my eyes on her the whole time she threw her sandals to the dunes and danced down to the ocean.

Wadin' in, she splashed, laughed and gave her body to the sun.

And that burnin'-up disc was doin' its zippity-doo-dah shit; having reached its zenith hours ago, it was lopin' down to the endless horizon.

_Red._ At least I assumed those sparks it ignited on the mirrored surface of the ocean were that color I couldn't ever quantify. _Crimson_. Like Bella's blood would be. It'd been so long since I had it straight from the tap, I wasn't sure I even remembered the full, rich taste.

Closin' my eyes, I gripped the rough railing until splinters flaked off.

_Time slippin' through our fingers._

Her scent drifted to me.

Stronger and stronger, even blinded I could still make her out down on the beach.

_Fuck._

Anyone ever survive her vampire mate takin' la tua cantante?

_Not likely._

If her flange tasted so good I never wanted to leave her thighs, if her tits were so temptin' and her lips capable of making me delirious… _what chance did we have when I got a hit of her blood?_

How the _fuck_ was I goin' to be able to stop once I started on her?

My fingerprints were carved into the wooden banister. I blinked my eyes.

I relinquished my lookout and set about to the sand.

I collected her sandals, stole a beach blanket, rolled up my jeans and joined her.

_So young._

Divots of white salt dried like tears on her face, and I touched each one with my tongue.

We made waves all right, but when her shirt sucked to her boobs and her skin was covered over in shivers, I escorted her out of the water.

Every time I inhaled I thought, "I love you, Bella."

Breathtaking and whole, she sat on the beach, drifting sand from one hand to the other.

It filtered and dripped and stopped, and I saw every grain, timed to her heart… _beating_.

Dying down, the sun went through us.

She turned, the warmth washing over her profile like a river. Sparkling shards of sand on her nose mimicked her sexy little freckles, the sun setting on her lips.

A smile, _so wistful_, she looked back to the sea and threw a sand dollar towards the foaming white mass. Like it was a vessel bottling all of our love notes, kisses, wishes, and promises folded inside.

The sun-bleached disc sank beneath turbulent waves.

Standing, tall and magnificent and glorious and Bella… _stunning_ with her long hair like reefs and her body's bearing attuned to life, afterlife, _me_, she strolled closer in between beach blankets and buckets and the human rubble she would never be part of again.

Gathering my hands with a nod, her voice low and clarified like honey, she honed in, "It's time."

A little towheaded shit flicked flakes of sooty silt up over us, pail and shovel in hand, sprinting madly to a fortress at the ocean's edge. Like the castle we would topple… not of sand, _not of man_.

Looking after the head-to-toe filthy little fucker, Bella laughed. I saw it all, but I could only watch her, in her final moments as a mortal.

She would be pinned to this world by me. Never to know warmth of skin, the rush of her own blood, the speed of her own heart again.

There would never be a child… not that I really wanted one, considerin' all the screeching and hollering the sunburned mini-bastards were churnin' up around us.

But that one kid reminded me of the girl I'd protected against other sand-castle-building-bullies on Kiawah Beach. Innocence. Perfect fucking naïveté.

_It was all gone._

Like the sand, running through fingertips, eroding out to the ocean.

I bore up because this was what I wanted, because this was what had to be done. _To keep Bella safe, even if she'd never be alive again._

She noticed the sardonic twist to my lips and lopsidedly kissed it away.

Simply, _lovingly_.

Touching her bare toes with mine, every single molecule of skin and grit crusted over me.

_I felt it all._

Another group of fucking annoying tourists with way too loud, porpoise-like screeches and guffaws like seagulls spread out next to where we stood.

Titling my head, I silently mouthed to Bella, 'Fuckers.'

A curve of her lips and a glittering in her eyes and a caress of my arms, she colluded.

I caught the flare of what she was about to become, as that sun fled to evening then to night… dusk, drear, dawn… never to sleep_, always to be._

Brushing away her salty hair, I held her cheek, yearned after humanity, kissed her hotly until it felt like we were alone on a barren stretch of beach.

_If I could just hold her, like this._

Shaking her head, tussles like ashes rained over us.

The atmosphere around us intensified and, more certain than me, she touched my lips, stroked my chest, pushed her mouth to my neck, "We'll come back, baby."

_~~ll~~_

_Deja voo-doo…_

"Hungry?"

"Nope."

"Tired?"

"Uh-uh."

"_Bella,"_ the pain I felt was insurmountable.

"We're going to do this, Eddie."

"Yeah."

"I want you to. I _want_ you _in_ me."

The trailer was cleared of messiness and a little too clean for my likin'.

Before I'd met Bella at Mama Brown's, I'd put new sheets on the bed. I'd gathered some candles.

I'd gone downtown and bought her a really expensive peignoir-lingerie-nightgown thing.

As I held it up, I fumbled for a second, "'S'okay if you want to get comfy in sweats or whatever." _Pus-SAY._

Nervously, I flamed each wick and watched Bella inspect the handwork of the midnight blue frills and ruffles and lace.

"I didn't mean it to be a friggin' shroud or some shit," I couldn't stop talkin' for the life of me.

"It's gorgeous. Thank you." She came over with a long sweet kiss, "I'd love to wear it."

I turned my back while she changed. Counted to one thousand, tried not to listen to every drop of cloth that meant her skin was bein' freed from her habille.

"/I'm still gonna be a taxidermist though," Bella pronounced out of the clear blue, _just because_.

I hid my smirk from her. "Excellent, it'll be a first among the vamp-femmes. _A regular Rosy The Riveter of our race._"

"You can look now."

Right before my eyes, Bella had transformed into a butterfly. Her creamy curves called to me from beneath blue and black lace that flowed off her shoulders and slip-slid down her body. "You are so lovely."

"You gonna get undressed now?"

_Yeah, 'course._

My clothes hit the walls and I walked to her, all tall.

I couldn't stop my hands from pressin' her back to the bed, and suddenly all I wanted to see her in was simply her succulent skin.

_Finally_, she was laid out naked on a web of lacey feathers.

My voice broke, my jaw sawed.

"C'mere."

I was between her legs and all over her, _soft, soft, soft._ "I love you. _I don't want to hurt you._"

Her breasts were wet with my saliva, my whole hand against her pussy, my mind at war with my venom that was battlin' with my cock.

_Every part of me wanted in her._

"Your eyes…!" she screamed as the piston of my fingers strolled up and down her shell-like lips and past the entrance of her cunt.

My face hit her hips, and I swirled from the tip of her bone to the bottom of her boob until I rose above Bella. I twisted her thighs wider open with my legs. My lips sucking each conical nipple into my mouth, my wide hands spanned her spine, bringing her down to where my cock bloomed its broad head against her quim.

"Your eyes are golden," Bella brought my lips to hers with a cry just as I penetrated in one long, deadly lunge…

_My cock all the way inside._

_And not fierce, not fuckin' wild, not a savage… not… not…_

"_Your eyes are golden."_

Not black.

_Deadly lunge._

I steadied her hips just as she was cumming, and I kept at her, overtaking her spasms with the thick, fast suction of my thrusts. I lapped her throat and turned her neck to the left so I'd have a quick shot right at her thumping her vein, I hauled her ass up and got as far inside her hot, fluttering pussy as possible…

_Then I pitted my teeth to her throat, and punctured her artery._

_

* * *

_

~Review, please! Me and Eddie sure do love 'em ;), and you know just how 'excited' Eddie can get (for excited, read 'horny')…so let's keep that priapic vamp in an ever-hard state, and review the ever-lovin' shit out of this~

**Chapter notes:**

"_Pain in the ass innocent bystanders_" is a quote from Godfather I

_Groking_ from _Stranger in a Strange Land_ by Robert A. Heinlein is "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathise or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment."

Gullah heritage information: http :/ yale . edu/glc/gullah/05. htm

**Blogs!**

The Dead Confederates blog & the Rebelward blog are filled with hot artwork, DC vids, chapter teasers, and other sexy one-offs (for this chapter alone, the manip and detailing of the chapter pic is not-to-be-missed! Huge wet sloppies to Lindz of Robmaniporn & MsEm who together make all the chapt/teaser art). Go have a look, links are on my profile.

**Awards**

Thanks for all the nom's, that is Fuckin A awesome! Now, it would be really cool to win one .

**Shimmers: **Voting has already closed, keep your fingers crossed (Best AU)

**Vampies: **Bloody Brilliant (Best Overall), review ave. 50-100

http : / twificpic s. com/vampawards/?page_id=294

**Inspired Fanfic Awards: First round thru Feb 23****rd****:**

http : / inspiredfanficawards .blogspot .

Categories I'm nominated in: 1000 reviews Angst, Youth Without Age

Favorite OTHER Emmett 2000, Dead Confederates

Favorite OTHER 2000, Esme, Youth Without Age

Vamps 2000 reviews, Dead Confederates

Best Bella 2000, Dead Confederates

Favorite Edward (it's EDDIE!) 2000, Dead Confederates

Thanks to Mac for the DC pimpage at Twific Pimps podcast (that was so cool DC's is at about 45 minutes, I think, but of course you should listen to it all ;)!):

www . twificpimps . com/2011/01/episode-13-brand-crack/

Eddie's covering his ears and humming loudly while I mention this last bit (_men_, vampires, _whatever_). **I wrote a slash o/s last week. **Go check it. New pairing. **Pain Killer**: 'Batten up the hatches, here comes the cold, I can feel it creeping, and it's making me old, you give me so much love that it blows my brains out. And a big *mwah* to Conversed who pimped it! That was an incredible surprise! I love her writing; please go read _Age Gaps_ for a starter.

Eddie's FB got reported and deleted . Eddie's back . Eddie was _not_ very happy .

Holy shit! Verbal vomit over. Fucking hell…

(don't forget to review)

Cheers, Rie~

(for all links, just remove the spaces)


	32. Till Death Do Us Part

****Huge Apologies! I changed the LA chapter and mistakenly posted it to DC's too. This is the re-upload...too many Eddie's and Wingwards for this gal to handle, apparently****

They're brilliant, beautiful, talented, and I'm sure they're convinced I'm a total nutjob and yet they rarely mention it (least not to me ;)). Huge kisses to Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta.

Disclaimer: *clears throat* I do not now, nor have I ever, owned anything related to Twilight (apart from a bunch o' books, movies, random fanphanalia…). I fuckin' _own_ Eddie's soul though ;).

**In Loving Memory of UberVamp**

_**~Rest in peace~ **_

**Song**

_Send the Pain Below, _Chevelles

youtube . com/watch?v=gpyRI1j9t6c

* * *

**Till Death Do Us Part**

"_Oh, fuckin' Christ, Bella,_" I groaned, my mouth filling with her insane infusion; a hot liquid spill down my throat. Tugging gently at her vein, I held her head still between my palms, continued to glide into her pussy, gorging myself on her cunt and her flavor.

Her hips racked against mine, and the moans that fell from her, _Jesus H. the moans… _they were completely friggin' sex personified as if my being at her neck made her want to climb into _my _skin. I released her wound with a loud, wet suck after pushing my poison into her, the cold from me coating the inside of her body.

Soon as she was freed from my grasp, she pushed her hands between our grinding bodies to clasp my cock through a few deep, dark thrusts. Little panting, _"Ah-ah-ah's" _cushioned her plush lips to mine and her hands flattened, palms pressed against my groin, around my dick, makin' me thump harder.

And I just kept at her, like a fucking addict, I couldn't stop! Bending over her, I took a nip from the crest of her tit, moved to her tummy, got up on my knees, hauled her legs over me, spread her thighs and made for the racing superhighway of her femoral, almost nastily biting into her with a snarl that got her screamin' in orgasm, "_Eddie!_"

So much venom inside her, so much of her blood singing, singeing inside of me—the ambrosia, the goddamn aroma of it made my head swim and my vision burn and my cock explode like a rocket on take-off.

I nailed her to the bed with a roaring, _"YES! YES, BELLA!"_

My hips still swingin' into her, grabbing at her… I curled over in hulking desperation, my voice cracking severely from my chest—that ever-sore spot—that was pierced straight through as I came down.

_Motionless._

Suddenly completely fuckin' _emotionless_, Bella was… _fuck!_

A few final brushes of her hands through my hair, from frenzied to falling aside. Her wrists dropped to my shoulders, and from there her arms splayed out to the mattress in crucifixion.

Her pupils… _fixed._

Dead weight.

_Still._

_Silence._

_Except for those Mother Fucking CRICKETS!_

I was paralytic, too, like I'd just fucked her twenty times, sucked down a glutton's amount of her liquid brew and chased it all with some of the _pezzo di merda_ Pill-Poppin' Panderer'sClass A drugs.

Those friggin' insects! I woulda gotten my shotgun and just tore up the front twenty to muzzle the cunts, but then I'd have to leave Bella's side. Fuckin' bullfrogs croaked slowly, gurgling like the gruel of her respiration in its death rattle. Junebugs slapped the screen in time with her exhales and inhales… _farther and farther apart._

Then her _screeching _yell bolted through me.

She was one heaving, sweaty mess, crawling to me with vicious cries, "You LIED!"

Succumbing to the pain, she coiled back, comatose.

I scrubbed my head, took a cool cloth to her body.

In the moments she was under, I was torn asunder.

When she was awake, I let her lash into me with her torment taking us both apart.

I watched, hatin' myself for wanting her to be just like me.

The sickness spread; toes curling painfully, her head gnashing against the pillow, her hips—those round handholds—writhing exhaustedly.

I brought in all the fans and aimed them at her.

As the cool rivers oscillated over her, she moaned achingly.

I held her in my arms, until she fucking clawed away from me.

_~~ll~_

Delirious, and her only half-dead, I barely heard Bubba tiptoe in with a whisper, "She okay?"

I blasted off the floor and gunned him against the plyboard, "Don't you fuckin' speak like this is a deathbed vigil! She ain't dead… _she's not gonna die._"

"Settle down, now, braw."

_~~ll~~_

Another night.

I hadn't moved but to give her a target for her strikes that came rapidly when midnight met ornery dawn.

Lying beside her, I pressed my hand to her failing heart, _"Please, Bella._"

There was the creak of the door openin'—I vaguely remembered the WD-40 in the shed.

Something heavy hit the carpet.

He backed away uneasily… _Bubba._ "Just some brews and blood."

_Blood._

"Get out."

_~~ll~~_

Wrapped up in her stultified form, I starved, too.

Bubba peered in.

"You gotta hunt, man."

I ignored him.

He threw me outside the trailer.

"Go on, I'll sit with her."

_~~ll~~_

Even from the fuckin' forest's suffocatin' keep, I heard his unholy yell. Sounding like half mule, half monster, Bubba brayed, "_SONUVABITCHIN'WHORE!"_

Hardly glancin' off the ground, my feet had me back to the double wide and inside and down the hallway, breakin' the bathroom door off its hinges.

The hideous tropical hues sharpened my eyes to blaring points that stabbed into Bubba's back where he sat curled over in the corner, a sobbing, slobbery mess. "Why aren't you with Bella? What the fuck's wrong, man? WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?"

He shook some more and thrust out a tube of… _Ben Gay_?

"What did you do?"

He motioned with his open fist goin' up and down.

_Jesus take me to the ground now. _"That's muscle rub, Twatson! _Not lube._"

"No shit, Sherlock, and I was _rubbin'_ one out on my _muscle._"

Squeezin' the wintergreen unguent down the toilet so it curdled on the surface, I threw a wet warshcloth at him, "And furthermore, the only 'Been Gay' around here is Jizzper."

"Trust," he weakly agreed.

With my forehead against the mirrored medicine cabinet, I held onto the sink's edge. I asked quietly, "Bella?"

He shook his head somberly, "No change, braw."

_~~ll~~_

Maw's Merc materialized out front.

I didn't move from my stationary stance on the porch couch.

Some time later she came back out. "I put on fresh fucked sheets for her; don't want her to get cold."

I stood straight up, "Fresh _fucked _what?"

Grabbin' my ears in her mother's pinching fingers she made me bend low enough to focus on her ingot eyes, "Fresh _flocked._ Flannel sheets, Eddie.

"Carl's comin' round tomorrow."

I didn't nod, she didn't smack me for swearin', and I was left realizing that Carl showing up was just one more fuckin' sign that shit was going downhill fast.

_~~ll~~_

"Mama sent this," Rose was a leggy blond mirage.

I took the styrofoam box, sniffed it, set it aside, "Ya'll give my thanks to Miss Mama, but Bella won't be needin' no food now."

"Don't you bet against Mama Brown now, Eddie."

_~~ll~~_

I was in the kitchen, starin' a hole through the wall.

Bubba was back in with Bella. Readin' aloud to her from his Kindle-Nook-Cranny… _whatever, _he was readin' some smutty shit written by prehistoric grannies no doubt.

An hour ago, her breastbone had craned up and out from the bed like it was gonna shear apart into a splintery wishbone.

_Jagged, ragged, chugging breaths distilled into that glugging death-beat._

Cold claws, her hands had clapped to mine.

I'd gotten into the bed with her, held her rigid body, massaged her arms and her legs and across her back until the deathroll left her an empty husk.

I sat in the kitchen because it was breakin' my fucking heart… _thing_… to watch her fail.

Bubba shouted.

Like before.

When he'd gone all Icy-Hot on his jock.

_No way. _I wasn't falling for his wackin'-off-bro-who-cried-wolf shitnanigans again.

Burying my head in my arms, I fished his thoughts outta my mind and splatted 'em to the lino.

There was a jarring knock. His knuckles rappin' against my skull.

"It didn't take."

Horrified, I jumped so fast the chair broke apart in a shower of shitty shavings, "What the fuck do you mean, _it didn't take?_"

"You fucked it up."

"Fucked it up?"

"She ain't right."

"What the _HELL_? Don't you just come out here and tell me… is she… _she's not..._" I couldn't even think the word, let alone say it. I clutched the wall until it began to cave in around me, creating a catacomb of fake-wood paneling interring me. Static, statuary, mortuary, my eyes crept to my boots, their laces undone as I imagined the ribbons on one of Bella's nightgowns sliding and slicing and framing her dainty spine, her plump ass.

_Bella!_

Thrusting off the dust and rubble and the long rubbery strips of caulking that held this entire shithole in place I was at her side in nothing-flat. "BELLA!" I roared until another panel splintered and hailed the bedroom with wooden needles like little oars.

Then I heard it.

What had been the steadily slowing _drip-drip-drip_ of her leaking heartbeat was now a strong pulsing stream.

_Her heart._

_Still beating._

I'd failed?

I pressed my hands on either side of her and laced her dreaming face with my honeycomb breath and watched and heard and listened and hurt and rejoiced and couldn't hardly cry, and I fucking died a little bit more inside, and I thanked the fucking Lord and Lucifer and all their malignant minions and angels… _she was still here._

_A human being._

Her throat arched and a gasp swarmed against me.

'_Look again,' _a thought from Alice came to me_._

Over her face, brighter and whiter, paler and more luminous. _I looked._

Her lips fuller, as if that was possible.

Her hair in brown waves, sorta more luxurious.

Her hips just as curvaceous and her tits just as perfectly pear-shaped as before, her nipples tightened beneath my icy cool glimpse.

_How the fuckin'-_

But her heart…_beat._

It bleated its usual pattern.

_Mepkin Abbey… a few days ago. I'd thought that was it, I'd known the war would rage there, but her rhythm… it would be the heartbeat from Alice's vision._

Her eyelids rose.

_That vignette of Bella… as a vampire. From Chelsea… but her eyes…_

Tawny and brown, they weren't non-chromatic red to me.

And her heart still walloped on.

_Her skin flushed again. __Warm._

Her lips parted and her tiny, white incisors sharpened like prison-made shanks. In surprise, her hands flew to her breastbone, colliding there with mine, "Is it done?"

"Yeah, darlin'." I brought her a cup o' blood, watched her nose scrunch. "You should drink."

Right then, splendidly naked and new as Aphrodite, familiar as my fuckin' hot lover, I placed the cup aside, sat astride her.

Large and rugged, my hands framed her face.

_Warm, still… so… warm!_

Her hips shifted open, lettin' me ride up and down, a wet fucking hump.

"Does it bother you?"

My hand stamped her tit, pulsated with her drumbeat, "Hell fuckin' no." She smelled just as indecent, but I'd had my taste.

That her heart still raced… I woulda' missed that more than I'd ever let on.

Her toes curled under the hem of my jeans_, _trawling rough fabric deliciously up to my calves. And she was still hot as hell against the soft shell peak of her lips and the rub-thrust-heave of her boobs.

She was probably hungry, but I was just so damned horny.

"You wanna take me for a test-fuck, don't ya?"

"_Yes."_

Soon as I circled her Circean clit, her hips belted up, her thighs channeled me into her.

Tongue and mouth, I made love to her demonically.

Fucking her in and out and all over until my face was wet, and then my dick was sliding against her swollen labia.

Every time I touched her, she moaned, "_So sensitive!"_

She still had the same cock-fucking rack—_check._ So I spit on my palms, rubbed and tugged her tits, and saddled myself up between her breasts.

Every ridge of my dick sweltered against her boobs.

Each thrust up met her opened mouth.

Untold-of thrills had her rippling, writhing, orgasming until sweet, pussy-lickin' liquid was so slippery between her thighs I sunk my fingers inside her.

"_I feel everything!"_

No time for beddin' her down, we were on the floor.

On my knees, splaying her wide, her soles to my palms, flat and rasping. Crazy…_grasping._

Pushed her legs until her thighs were against her tummy, and I spread her wide, too. At her tits I bit and growled.

Up and over, bending her back, I rode Bella, feeding off the unyielding steel beneath her still-soft skin.

I slowed.

I came in and out.

_All the way._

Long slow hard _fuck._

_Yes._

"_YES!"_

I flipped her over, took her all the way down against the floor and worked my cock back into her, reining her with my hands in her hair.

She sucked my fingers.

I pulled her ass up.

She hooped against me.

I fucked her so hard the floorboards warped.

Wet and dirty and delirious, we enveloped each other.

Bella laughed, "We trashed this place."

I squinted around, got on my elbows to look about. Shit was everywhere. Sheets, clothes, pillows, shoes—_my Hustlers?_—albums. Smiling, I sank back beneath her, "Thrashed it."

After the days of waitin', hating, wondering, with everything all goddamn neat and tidy and too quiet… this was back to rights.

_Almost._

I wanted more destruction.

"You must be hungry, darlin'."

_Bella, huntin', drawing blood…_

Riddled with a sudden daemon-like light, her irises inscribed with heathenish craving; that lust of another kind.

Her features changed from bliss to… _fuck! _She looked all hardass, and totally spitting pissed! _"Famished."_

She leapt up lightning fast, quicker than even I could follow, just like that shooting star I'd traced under the midnight dome not so long ago.

She raged and hunkered, and her eyes were eerily another color; they'd been so pretty just a few minutes before. Now they were captivatin' in their unleashed terrorizing.

She took off at such a fuckin' furious pace I had to actually _exert_ myself from a lope to a sprint to keep up with her.

It wasn't until miles and miles through swamp, and slick green vegetation, and dappled dense forest that I was able to catch up with her. She tore up tread outside a church to a skidding halt with me wranglin' her back.

Splutters and hisses and hellfire tripped her away from my grasp.

_Fuck me, she was… formidable!_

Pavlov got all goddamn hot and bothered in my jeans, springing to action like the cuntin' dinner bell had tolled.

With graceful, _menacing_, stealth, Bella crouched and jetted from the copse to the parkin' lot, teeth bared, eyes glinting, a feral fuckin' heatwave coming off of her like the ethereal oily scream of South Carolina's August sun on black tar.

Intense and rapacious, Bella scanned the surrounds and found her mark.

At the edge of the cemetery, with her sights not on the church where a wedding was takin' place—_thank fuck for that, at least—_Bella propelled through the air to land on top of…

_Cacky's bastard Bride Aid VW Beetle._

_Un-fuckin'-real._

She punched through the windshield, dug around the glove box, came out with somethin' gripped and crumpling in her fist.

Steam rose off her on her elegant march back to me.

"Gotcha!" she showed me the mangled photo of me and…_that fucking mistake I'd never live down, the hometown Wedding Planner_.

In front of me, she ripped it with blurrying speed to nothingness.

"You…_how the fuck did you find that?_"

My cock wanted done with Q & A time and straight onto Quim and Ass time.

"Um," her nose scrunched, "not sure?"

"Was it the picture you were after… or her?" My dick shook its head at me in righteous alarm that I'd just witnessed the most sexy vampire—_human… whatever—_Bella display… _and I was still questionin' her instead of fucking her._

"I scented you here, in her car."

_Mother Lover._

_At least it hadn't ended with Meals on Wheels._

Hell, and now I needed her heels on my shoulders, her pussy under my mouth, her tits bombastin' my face… _I needed a taste!_

"I really am hungry, though; can we hit the drive-thru?"

_Huh?_

With the rank odor of Bojangles Chicken 'n Biscuits germinatin' in the Bronco, I cranked the windows down. "Bella, we gotta get you checked out."

"By the good DVM, _I presume_."

_~~ll~~_

"What the hell am I?"

All her blasé my-balls-to-the-walls attitude went by the wayside soon as we pulled up to Luxury Hollows and found Carl inside.

Fucking shit-hot, that's what she was. But before I went at her again, with my full friggin' strength, I needed to know just how durable she was.

Not to mention…why the Hell didn't she want blood?

"Let's lay it all out, little lady." Carl rubbed an empty pouch of pork scratchin's between his palms, workin' up a smelly crackle with the cracklin'.

He just had to say 'lay', didn't he? 'S if I needed any encouragement.

"We know you can shield."

Yeah, like every-fuckin'body seemed able to do nowadays.

I stalked, Bella caught my hands in hers and rubbed across my knuckles, Paw talked. And whiffed.

"You're also wanted by the Volturi, to be used against us," he planted his shitkickers to the coffee table, scatterin' debris, "and that someone over them waters is stagin' a revolution, with you as the final chess piece to their coup."

Fuck them Ferrari drivin' Italiano faggots. My Ford could cunt-fuck that foreign-made pussy Palermo shit into the ground and still diesel on.

From thin air, Carl revealed a new bag of Cheetos.

His eyes magic-balled back into the sockets as he puffed the bag of orange, chalky junk food open.

Bella dove her hand in when he offered the shit to her, came up with saffron dye melted all over her fingers.

_And again… bloodlust?_

"Strong as an ox."

"Foxy as fuck," I lapped her up with my eyes, licked my bottom lip, imagined her thrown down on the rug and beggin' me to rut with her.

"We've seen you as a conduit between Paulie and Katrina," Carl rolled up the sleeves of his old flannel shirt with half a smirk cocking his lips.

_She conducted my cock._

All the while, Bella rained her fingers up and down my forearms in what was supposed to be a soothin' movement—presumably—but all her touch did was alight chills from the balls of my feet up the insides of thighs to land hotly in the taut globes of my nuts.

My face hard planes, I demanded, "Cut it out."

"What, baby? This?" her fingernails scratched the undersides of my bulging biceps until I let my head loose on my neck and groaned loudly.

"Yes, that, Fuck!"

Clearing his throat of non-cigar-smokin' phlegm, Carl called our attention.

"Can Bella be killed?" my tone was low, unrecognizable. I didn't really want to know.

"Ye-ah. We all can, Son." That was no friggin' help at all. "But she's much heartier than before… just look at her."

Ah, No. Because if I did, I'd have her against the fireplace, bent over, right quick. And that weren't appropriate viewin' for no one but me.

"Your heart beats more slowly, Bella-darlin'. So your ability to recover from mortal blows has increased." He scrubbed his face and peered out between coarse fingers, "But your heart is still your weakness."

She looked at me longingly, "Always was."

I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes.

"Y'always had a strong constitution, Bella," he smiled broadly and produced a Cohiba from his breast pocket, "now you got some of Eddie in you to stitch you up good and proper, should things go awry."

Well that weren't no reassurance no-how! I needed her to be all right in herself, damn it.

With acceptance, in her usual no-holds-barred way, she blithely asked, "Ageing?"

_Fuck me! I hadn't even considered that._

"I don't rightly know that the answer, Bella. But I'm gonna hazard a guess." He gave a paradoxical professorial pause, which I filled in with, "Fuck, man! Just tell us! Is she gonna keep aging or has she stalled out like that rusted out Dodge Charger sittin' on blocks back of Texas's trailer?"

"You comparin' me to the Dukes of Hazard ride?"

"No, no… I just…" I took her in my arms, kissed her completely until she bowed over my arms, crushing my t-shirt in her fists.

Carl lit a match to his stogie and watched the embers catch. "You done been through the puberty. You have been changed, somehow." He blew across the stub-end, coolly continued, "Now I reckon—but don't go quotin' me on this—y'all ain't gonna turn one day older. Fountain of youth," he winked at us.

It felt like my stomach was droppin' out, lifting up!

On his feet, stabbing his cigar to the overflowin' ashtray, Carl shrugged, "Seems pretty straightforward. You're a liger."

"Liger?"

We looked at him blankly.

"Male lion, female tiger."

And still…drawin' a blank.

He swiped his Cuban back up to chaw on, puffed it dryly a few times and squinted down its length, "Put it this way. Think of Bella as the Bionic Woman."

Yeah. Now that made more sense then the interbreedin' bullhockey he'd cooked up.

He started hummin' the theme song, makin' for the screen door. "Best of both worlds," were his last words.

_Huh._

_Part-human Bella who I could have forever? __Fuckin' Lotto. _

"I ain't no Lee Majors though," I led Bella down the hall.

"Well, no, baby. He's an old fart. You're… well you are old, but… you're way better… stronger… faster… than any part-plastic, prosthetic toyboy."

As we passed the kitchen, she grabbed onto the fake surround.

"Thirsty?"

"Parched."

"Blood?" I was hopeful.

"Bloody Mary?"

_Always resistant. _

Bubba broke in, swung my girl around, looked like he was seein' the second coming. "Holy fuckin' Lazarus, man!"

I frowned.

"Lazarene?"

I scrunched my brow, "Nah, sounds too much like Listerine, that fucking does."

Twirlin' a ladder back chair around, Em sank his ass down and I found myself at the Frigidaire, muttering, "You'd probably like blood, if you just gave it a go."

I made a plate of that crap Rose had hand-delivered the other day.

_Mama'd been right._

"Could go for a turkducken right about now," Bella set out some not-quite silverware.

What the? "Some other kind of genetic mutation?"

"Naw, braw, it's a chicken in a duck in a turkey."

My sight was strict, "And you think animal blood is gross?"

Bubba puffed up like at a pulpit, gettin' ready to give me what-for, but I cut him off, "Shut it, Enabler."

Not quite takin' my comment to heart, he pulled out a slim wallet and flipped through…_coupons?_

"You got some money-off for a Butterball in there?"

Bubba approved, "Hell yeah, sister, that's what I'm talkin' about!"

Her innocent fist bump sent him sprawlin' and left him momentarily stunned.

Her growing smile was heavenly.

Her insouciant shrug a total fuckin' turn-on.

"Oh, I am so hittin' _that._" Bubba smacked his palms off the floor and rousted up.

_Oh no you ain't._

Bella grinned, "Bring it."

_The shit? Was this the fucking Twilight Zone or somethin'?_

"Yeah," Bubba nodded. "Tomorrow, your ass is mine."

I threw him out the back forty, "Get the fuck."

Bella ate that slop I served. I assumed it was Mama Brown's Best by the way she let out little moans. I was mesmerized by the way her tongue wrapped around the tines of the fork, her teeth tucking into her lower lip, her tongue peekin' into the corner of her mouth.

Trained on her, I emptied a pint of blood into a jam jar and pivoted a chair on its hind leg so I could cross my arms over the back slats.

"You like to watch me eat, baby?"

_Christ, her skin was radiant_, _her eyes were a melee of color lit with otherworldliness._

"Yeah." I grinned down into my cup, yanked her chair around the side of the table so she was right next to me. Rearrangin' her long, coiling hair over her shoulder, I licked up and down her neck, "Sure do, darlin'. _I like to eat, too._"

Scrapin' her plate clean and gluggin' back her sweet tea, Bella raised her arms in a stretch that bared her sinful belly, then stifled a… _yawn?_

_What the hell was this now?_

I scowled, "Uh, you tired?"

"Yeah, bit sleepy, I guess."

_Bang went my plans for endless days and nights o' fucking!_

I carried her to the bedroom, deviously undressed her, felt her warmth remainin' like sun-kissed skin afterhours on a summer day like this one.

"You're so pretty, Bella." I kissed the tip of her nose and rubbed our cheeks together, slipped to her ear, "So goddamn beautiful."

Fingers braided into my hair and a sigh wrenched from her, our bodies unclothed, so close. A tear tracked down her face, then another. "I thought I was gonna be lost to you, Eddie."

"Shhh, _shhh._ S'okay now."

Just like before, like every night I'd ever spent with her, Bella slowed down, her breath whiffled in and out, a damply heated fan.

And it hit me real hard.

_She'd been so close to death._

_She'd come out of it… alive?_

_Sorta._

Fuckin' _Tales of the Unexpected_, right there.

You know, if Vincent Price were still alive.

I held her tighter in my arms, her hips a calabash in my hands.

Her tits my pillow.

Her breathin', _her heartbeat_, like a frickin' lullaby.

Only a few hours had passed before Bella woke. Crickets—_those cunts_—continued makin' a ruckus outside and the sun still settled under the horizon.

She rolled me over, _recharged_, fuckin' rearing to go as her locks lazily spun down my chest and headed way south where my cock kept up its rock-hard formation.

Lips swilling and tongue drizzlin', _dipping,_ tasting and totally mouth fucking me, she was all wide awake.

When I pressed my dick up and roved around her pussy with circling strokes and pounded my head back until all my muscled overhauled the bedding, I shouted, "You're done sleepin' already?"

"Oh yeah."

_Goddamn Bonus!_

_~~ll~~_

"Y'all should branch out, try new things, you know?"

"I don't think so."

"G'on, give it a shot."

"Eddie!"

_Not like I was asking to fuck her ass or anything like that… we'd get to that later._

"Please? For me?"

She scoffed, "No. I ain't gonna do it just because you think it'd be 'hot' to watch me hunt, race after my quarry, take down an antelope, _hold its struggling body to the ground and rip its throat apart._"

I reeled from her description. "_Fuck, Bella… _you always like it when I use my manners. C'mon, _please_."

_Man, I needed to see her in action. _

"Besides, it'd be a waste of a life. And I know how you hate to squander…_finite resources and all that_."

I grumbled to myself_, "Some vampire she was turnin' out to be." _Then I said, "What if you kill it and I'll eat it?"

"You gonna do the three R's?" Shit, _what?_ I couldn't hardly focus beyond what she was wearin'—coupled with images of her taking apart a doe, seein' the thick course of animal blood swallowed down her throat.

"Yeah sure whatever… I'll reuse it, you fuckin' recycle it…make a damn taxidermy effigy out of it."

"You forgot one."

"Huh?"

"The other 'R', baby."

_Well, it better not fuckin' be Reproduce._

"Reduce."

"Got nothin' on that one, Bella."

"Okay. _Once_. When in Rome, or _Cape Romain area, as it were_…."

I began to 'lay it all out' with, "First you gotta just smell the air, find a scent, fix your-"

Before I could even finish, Bella was half a mile ahead of me, leaping over decayed tree trunks the size of my pickup, blasting past razor-sharp saw palms, jumpin' across a scummy pond.

She dallied at the edge of a clearin', all the fuck up in Francis Marion Forest.

Lookin' back at me, she lifted a single fingertip to her lips, arched an eyebrow, blew me a kiss.

Her backdraft belted me onto my heels, and all I saw was her take a flyin' somersault that had her tackling a ten-point whitetail to the forest floor; its heavy _thud _was quietly carpeted by the underlay of rotting pinestraw.

_JesusMotherFuckin'Cunt._

Wickedly, she wrenched its neck—a brawny thing as thick as her waist—to the side. Tenderly, she gazed into its eyes that matched hers, sundering her hands down its bellowing sides. _Waifishly, she whispered her apologies._

Naked, her teeth lunged thirstily into its vein. A meaty bite, the melting of its carotid into her mouth, and she _jolted _as the hot mead made its way inside.

Sucking harder, holding faster, locking its jerking antelopian body down, Bella straddled the buck and broke its neck swiftly. Her lips wet, dripping, she stared over at me.

Carnal caryatid.

I hadn't moved.

_Artemis._

Her tongue was an arrow taking it all inside. Her body a bow aiming from the deer to me.

Her eyes slits.

The voracious inhuman tableau turned headily sexual.

Pinpricks of light fledged over her as she prowled to me, "I could kill you."

Needles chilled my skin, "Already dead."

We slammed into each other with a crash that flattened a stand of trees, _tears and gasps and grasps and a gulf of need made us scrabble, scrape, rip, shred… take!_

The blood-taste on her mouth made me wild.

I scissored against her, leaving little rivulets of saliva seeping down her tits to her belly to her cunt. I buried my mouth against her again, at every delicate, silvery wound I'd made, bared my teeth enough to nibble and almost cut. Her neck, her breast, her belly and inner thighs and straight up into the heart of her pussy.

Madly fucking, we growled… a wet, hot heathenish destiny that dropped all appearance of civility.

Sneers and snarls and spittle and… _I backed her up into a tree._ Her spine bruised the bark and her laugh brazenly surrounded me.

We screwed so hard the wooded surrounds deafened with our…_ "Oooooh YES!"_

"_Yes, yes, yes more yes!"_

Gnarly, and nasty, and not-human and… _seized._

_Stopped._

Her soakin' cunt clasped my cock, and our struggles ended with lips half-opened, tongues seeking but unable to touch.

Dense cum pulsed out of me, I scrapped apart the pine behind her, laid her flat and fucked her again with her knifing nails leavin' trails down my back.

_Finished._

Our hips still rushed together.

_Slowly._

I folded her under my arm.

"Jesus."

"_And_ all the saints."

"So… _blood_?"

"_Eh, _I could take it or leave it."

_~~ll~~_

Hoppin' out of bed like a fire was lit under her ass, Bella ran a quick shower and started dressing in some kinda stretchy short-shorts that cupped her ass as my palms had just a couple hours before.

Creating a thick, high ponytail, she faced the mirror and inspected her face, lookin' for newness**.** The change in her appearance was a slight shift towards immortality.

On my elbow, I threw the chenille spread off, "You're still the same."

"Am I?" she touched her mouth and questioned from her reflection.

"Yeah," I swung my legs to the floor, dug around for a cold one, took a slug, "just… _different _enough to remain with me."

"I feel _alive._"

My smile spread, "You are."

Her high-tailed hair had me thinkin' of grabbing it, coiling it around my arm and goin' at her, but she found a tank top and covered her bare breasts.

"What are you doin'?" _Fuck that, what was she wearing?_

"Well, I think you should take me to the Huddle House, first. And then I got a date with Bubba."

"And he's got a date with mah fist."

I hunted for a pair of jeans, figured they looked acceptable by the way Bella's eyes slid off my hips to the placket.

Pavlov punched up.

"Not IHOP?"

"Nope."

"_Waffle House?"_

"Uh uh," she drew me into the hallway by my belt loops, "the _juice_ is better at Huddle… not to mention the _syrup._"

After watchin' Bella practically make love to her shortstack until I wanted to molest her with my thick shaft in the booth, I drove us back to Luxury Hollows.

Bubba was warmin' up outside.

I helped Bella out of the Bronco and cracked my knuckles, scowlin' at Bubba.

Carlisle handed me a lawnchair, and a beer.

The Ratty Tattler and Jizz joined us.

Parasol in tow.

Soon as Em parked up in front of Bella, I dove off the chair and knocked him to the dirt ground!

"What's your major malfunction?" His eyes popped like a guppy.

"You do her harm, and I'm gonna tear off your apeman arms… _we clear?_"

Jizz inspected his toothpick, "Man, you need some herbage."

Bubba bounded up, "Yeah he do."

Bella's irises held mine, "Settle down, now. I got this one."

Beckoning with two fingers, she convened the wrasslin' match, "Bring it, Bubba."

I took a seat on the sidelines, muttered an aside to Carl, "She still got newborn strength, right?"

Carl spat a long line of 'baccy juice, "Yup."

I yelled, "Your ass is grass, bro!"

Bella blew me a kiss… _then she blew straight across Bubba._

His hip hit a river rock, and the boulder held for a second before _smashing_ over his thighs.

Hunkering low, Bella gave him the bird.

A forest-flattening roar ramped from him and his feet thudded big imprints to the soil as he railroaded to her.

My chair was mangled.

I held my hand out for some magic smoke.

A joint was positioned between my fingers.

As his magnificent fist flew in front of him, Bella tucked under… and I toked harder.

She grabbed his nuts and _squeezed._

I drank, sank to my knees.

Her elbow to his chest, her thigh to his groin, her arm a wheel-lock around his neck and like a stampeding bull, Bubba ground grass under his knuckles and hauled on with her piggy-backing him.

He stuttered, shuddered, stopped with his windpipe closing.

Didn't matter if we could do without breath. Survival made us want to fill our lungs.

One final burst of energy, he sprayed her back.

Motes of crabgrass turned into harsh green rain from under Bella's jarring fall.

Lightly, she twisted on her feet and watched Bubba rush her. She dropped to her back at the last minute as his bulky blur smashed… _right into her immovable feet that lifted him up and over and flailin' across the yard and down the rubble driveway._

Down for the count, he wheedled, "How'd you learn to do that?"

"Used to watch a lot of _Xena, Warrior Princess_."

"Right on," he gasped, givin' her the hairy eyeball.

I grabbed Bella around her waist and swung her in a circle, thoroughly fuckin' impressed with her display.

Carl sidled up.

I decidedly ignored him.

"Just one other thing." _Fuck, he just wouldn't take the friggin' hint, would he?_

With all the indelicacy of a vampire used to dealing with heifers instead of half-humans, Paw said, "We should talk about the issue of breedin' again."

"NO!" we shouted in unison**.**

"Surely, you must have some fixed pattern of maternal behavior; it's in the genes."

"You've heard about my mom, right?" Bella hugged against me. "I don't want to perpetuate that blight. I love her… _but blood's thicker than water, right?_

"No kids. Besides, I don't think Eddie wants to share my tits with an infant."

Agreed.

_Greed._

"So we're still good to go bareback? Because I don't really wanna jizz in a Dixie cup again" …_had better places for my load to land, namely Bella's boobs, mouth, snatch…_

"Yeah." Carl answered. "You're still sterile. Unchangin' and all that. But Bella ain't."

"You sure about him? Cause he fucks like he's got a raging bull's load of little swimmers."

I just raised an eyebrow…_hell, if I'd had 'em, there wouldn't have been anything little about my swimmers._

_~~ll~~_

I watched Leah's Pontiac Thunderbird smelt back out of the drive.

"What did Miss Alpha Bits want?"

"Chick stuff."

I pounced on Bella. _I still couldn't read her mind._ It was infuriatin'.

Grabbing her ass, I brought her right against me, "Better not be discussin' toys."

"What you gonna do about it if we were?"

"Got your fuckin' one and only plaything right here."

Her lips lowered down my body as she escaped my cage.

"This _thing?_" Bella played over my cock in its wrangled jean cloth.

She found my head, followed it back with hot laps over my erection.

Groping me through my jeans, Bella put her lips around me, then finally tugged my Levis down, _surrounding me._

She pressed me to the wall and bit into my flesh enough to send flashes of pleasure careening through my balls. I almost keeled over with her naughty nibbling under my glutes, up and down the backs of my legs.

She smacked my muscled thighs, "Wider, baby."

Laving my sac from under and behind, she whispered wetly, "Bring that sexy cock down for me, baby."

I let her blow me from below, her mouth takin' me deeper, her hand couching my pouch, her other fingers strafing up and down the muscular grooves in my pelvis until I almost blew my wad.

My cock slowly slurped out of her mouth, her swollen lips smackin' and my uncontained growls nothin' but low rasps from my chest. On my back, I spread my thighs and lifted my hips, held my dick around its thick base and told her, "Ride me, Bella."

Her hot, wet sexy pussy lowered onto me inch by inch _by inch_. I grabbed her waist, ran my hands up her slim back, pulled her forward until her tits hung in front of my face. _"Oh fuck. Ride me hard, darlin'!"_

Her mouth formed a naughty smile and her palms opened on my chest. Then she whipped her hips up and dropped right back onto me in a fast plummet that tore the breath from my lungs and made my neck strain to the side in a fuckin' onslaught of agonizin' arousal.

With her bouncing nipples captured between my lips, tongue, teeth, with her cunt on its hard gravitational gyrations, Bella pumped me, rocked me, rode me until a huge spray of cum blasted into her and her own clear juices were a wet wash where our bodies met and held and rubbed and continued to fuck.

Hours later, I felt a weird pressure sitting on my torso, igniting its way up from my stomach, setting off fireworks in my head.

_Groggy,_ my hands fished for her.

But the bed was empty.

Sluggishly, I raised my head.

Felt like I'd been on a bender for a week straight.

There was no reprieve in Bella's eyes as she sat cross-legged on the floor.

_Woozy_, I clambered off the mattress.

Her hands twined into my hair, brought my head down to her lap.

I remembered the scotch-soda she'd brought to me after we'd finished making love.

_It hadn't tasted right._

I frowned one final time, _"Bella?"_

"Hush now, baby. I'm gonna make everything alright."

* * *

~Reviews make Eddie less ornery and more horny (_is that even possible? Yes, yes it is_)~

**Story notes:**

We have three to four more chapters left.

Please alert (and read) _Rebelward Without a Cause outtakes_. I will be writing one prior to the next chapter…it's The One you won't want to miss ;).

**Blog Feature:**

Many thanks to all at The Lemonade Stand, extra special naughtiness to Michellegoogleseverything and evilnat and to those who voted like mad to get Dead Confederates on as Fic of the Week:

www . com/?zx=5dff136808348650

**Viddies:**

**Rebelward (just because I still watch this more often than I should)**

youtube . com/user/ROBZSINGER1#p/u/7/UZ0unoCZdhE

**I'm a Man (new Eddie hotness by Bell J.)**

youtube . com/watch?v=Pl7H9r6Fo_0

**Love Advocated:**

My fast darkfic (which is also oddly funny) will wrap up this weekend after two weeks of daily+ posting…and all I have to say about that is: Got Wings? Go check it. Short chapters and an Edward the likes of which you've never encountered before.

**Blogs-sexy (links, profile…these are where you'll get your chapter teasers):**

http : / deadconfeds .wordpress . com/

http : / rebelward . wordpress . com/

Cheers, Rie~


	33. Haunt Me

Divine love for my betas; Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta, plus extra special kisses to my favorite lovely lass, Heather Bella!

Disclaimer: Double Wide, case of PBR, Porch Couch, Bronco…_mine._ Twilight is not.

~~Sweet adoration to my orig DW women, lascivious laughs to Eddie's fuckbook ladies, hardcore love to MsEm and Lindz, and really huge hugs to all who continue to read and review! **A reminder: a new **_**Rebelward Without a Cause **_**posted last week. Please read so you can stay in the lowcountry loop**~~

**Extra enormous love to my Cainwhore partner-in-crime, Gee Kay. Hopefully some laughs for you, too**

**Song:**

_Say You'll Haunt Me, _Stone Sour

youtube . com/watch?v=eEn-nTkbEM0

* * *

**Haunt Me**

I wanted to ask Bella just what the fuck was goin' on, but I couldn't goddamn move my head from its face-plant in her lap, let alone open my mouth except to part my lips for pathetic, guppy-like breaths. Damn, felt like I was up to my neck in pluff mud, and the cold clamminess was steadily oozing into my mouth with a sensation that drowned my throat and filled my chest cavity to solidify there.

My voice garbled, I managed a croakin' toad-like, "Bella?"

I felt a wetness on my face that was warm, nothin' in common with the swamping quicksand grabbin' hold of me.

_Bella's__ tears ploppin' down onto me._

_Pit-pats_ of those salty drops kept spatterin' at me.

And I couldn't even fuckin' lift my hand to touch her cheek and wipe her face, couldn't even offer her my t-shirt as her favored Kleenex to wipe her nose.

Finally, with that mega new strength of hers I hadn't even gotten a chance to explore yet, she hefted me up—made me feel a little bit less like I was wimpin' out when she struggled a bit with my monumental weight—and rolled me back onto the bed that smelled like Heaven-aka Bella's body-her sweet and tasty scent, and a whole fuckin' lotta sex.

Coverin' me with the faded bedspread, she ran her fingers slowly down my chest then back up my throat and onto my lips.

Deafening mire cascaded into my ears, and I couldn't for the life—or death, _or whatever _—of me clean that shit out. I thought I heard somethin' else, maybe it was _baby _or _love_ or _I love you, Eddie fuckin' Cullen, and don't you forget that_—yeah that sounded about right, but the words melted away faster than I could grasp them.

Me all arranged like a swaddled baby and feelin' drugged up to my eyeballs, Bella started moving with a purpose that put more fuckin' fear in me than anything ever had before.

Steadfastly goin' about the room she was… _fuck me! _She was gathering all her shit? Clothes, books, tools of her trade, her fricking panties and lacy bras and her wetdream shoes and… _what the fuck!_

I groaned and tried to command my voice to speak, attempted to tell my arms and legs to get a goddamn move on to stop her movin' out right before my very eyes!

She performed a final visual sweep, then settled her finger to my lip which was replaced by her mouth and more tears and a steely strength in her eyes just before she gently lowered my own eyelids.

"_Shhhh, baby. I was never here._"

_~~ll~~_

I came to with a beastly _ROAR!_ like I was breakin' through a thick layer of ice, havin' been trapped under a frozen pond.

In a rage, not a bit friggin' dopey, fully fucking cognizant, all that cracked right through me like an ax into a stump of wood was the horrifyin' understanding… _Bella was gone._

"_GODDAMN IT!"_

I ripped through my room, toppled the dresser and tore off its fake brass handles, then hurled it into the drywall so it punched through to the living room. On my hands and knees, I went all seek-and-destroy just to find any final piece Bella might have left of herself.

_She'd left nothing._

I cranked my knees up to my elbows and hung my head with my breath blowing out in icy shards until a full freaking winter Jack Frosted inside my room that was emptied of her_._

I lifted my hand and patted around just enough to latch onto that cooler of cold ones Bubba'd brought me a couple days ago when I hadn't known whether Bella was gonna live or die.

Rustlin' around inside the muggy Styrofoam, I chipped away until I found an unopened brew; I broke the neck sheer off and laughed hollowly as the glazed, green glass scraped impotently against my lips.

Drank that in a oner. Went right back for another.

Looked like ADHD Bubba had been on a scavenger hunt in my bedroom after my lunatic spree.

But that was just me.

_There was just me._

Standing and crossing the room, I looked outside the tacky window and saw her truck was absent.

I head-butted that pane until it went all concave with an impression of my forehead smack dab in the middle.

"_BELLA!"_ I screamed as if what powered my lungs would bring her back to me from her desertion.

Full of stupid and dumbly hopeful, I ventured into that final stronghold of my room; the closet.

I half expected Jizz to be beatin' off in there to _Blueboy_; quaint _Queer as Folk_ as he was no matter what he had goin' on with his _Go Ask Alice._

And I shoulda' known my girl would have hidden those keepsakes of herself right up on my top shelf behind the shoebox of bullets and my archived arrangement of sundry magazines all about ass and tits.

She so fuckin' had my number.

Right up there was Bella's Own Top Shelf material.

Shoved back to the plankboard.

Just the thought of what she might have stowed away for me up there had the Pavlov goin' all hard-as-a-plank itself.

Strugglin' to be gentle with her stuff, I pulled the collection of Bella's Hot Shit into down in to my lap.

_Those golden heels with the long sexy ribbons that had wrapped up over her ankles and calves._

_The no-Mo-Lewinsky yellow dress I'd Hell-Yes spunked all over and used as a sexy security blanket the last time she'd left me._

_The G 'n R tanktop that had been taken to pieces by my teeth and fingertips; the one she'd worn the day we'd all gone out to the ATP gun range and I'd wrangled her hot titties from the black top. _Man, them were the days. I recalled pullin' up next to Rose's carmine red Camino, gunnin' my engine and holdin' hands with Bella and later, almost blowing my load when she fired her Glock and the sight of her perfect aim went straight to my cock. Then back to Luxury Hollows for some filthy wet 'n wild sudsy cocksuckin' fun in the shower… _the very first blowjob she'd given me._

_She wasn't just a juicy made-to-destroy-me decoy, was she?_

NO. _NO!_

I smashed out of the door with her delectable leavin's—the ones I could fit what with them sharing rent space with my rigid dick-stuffed in my pockets.

_Fuck This._

I was a man-vamp-_whatever_ of action.

Time to say good-fuckin'-bye to the good ol' boy.

Alice met me in the faux-wood paneled hall as headed to the kitchen for a pre-trip filler-upper.

I strode past her and uncapped a PBR, readied a few dozen bloody ounces, too. My back battled into the Frigidaire until it made like my sarcophagus, and its dim _buzz_ shut the fuck up with one hefty punch of my fist.

She screwed her eyes shut and made like a mime with her mind; projectin' all sorts of disembodied images at me that made about as much sense as oink oink Palin even havin' the whisper of chance at becomin' VP.

_Man, I was goin' mental__, and Yoda here was doin' the Jedi mind tricks with me?_

I pictured the wrinkled little dwarfy, pointy-eared 'Force be with you' fucker, thinkin', _'Right back at you, bitch.' _And then I reared forward so fast Alice never saw me coming until I had her neck in my hand and body off the floor so she made a nice little taxidermy trophy hangin' up against the wall like that.

_Yeah, you resemble that remark, dontcha? _I thought as Yod-Alice sputtered like an Evinrude much as she could inside my chokehold… _Hell, it wasn't that much of a stretch... not like she could be an Ewok, because those vermin were almost cute and cuddly and shit._

Unlike the wench who'd started thrashin' against me.

Calmly, I took another drink, then helped myself to a clotted chaser. My voice remained even, and it was full of evilness, "I don't know how many times I gotta fight you to get some _fucking_ truth out of you."

She inhaled slowly and emitted a reedy_**,**_ "And I don't know how many times I've got to play this same old broken-record for you, Eddie: _you cannot know what the fuck's going down._"

Tremblin' with the effort to not slice and dice her, I bit out, "I don't give a _shit_, sister, so you better start talkin'."

She wheezed, "You have to let go of my throat first."

_Oh yeah, my winch to her windpipe was puttin' a world of hurt on her._

I relinquished my knuckles from around her neck and watched her go all cat's-nine-liveson the lino, makin' sure the long dusty-black of her dank lace skirt didn't touch the sticky-_ew_ of my floor.

"It was Leah."

I spluttered like a motherfucker with his lips tight to a tailpipe, "Alpha-bitch _what?_"

"Back at the Music Pharm. You were so off your game because of Demetri-"

My incisors cranked out like a can opener's blade on hearing his name.

"He gave something to Bella." _Darth InSidious_ walked closer and nestled herself right into my brain with the visual reel that left me spinnin'. "And she handed it to Leah.

"Don't you see?"

She decided to voice-over her visions as I watched every scene we'd already lived:

"Eleazar greased the wheels."

_Fuckin' gre__asy git, all right._

"Chelsea's mission was to make Bella's choices very clear… go with _them_ or be the death of _us_."

_Chum-faced Chelsea had __worked her line on Bella._

"And Demetri was the Deal Closer."

_All's I knew was when I go__t my hands on D the Delinquent, he was gonna have to set up his Meth lab next to Mephistopheles._

"He gave it to Bella, she passed it to Leah. Leah turned up here. You were laid low…"

_A__nd the rest was fuckin' history._

"So… _what_?" The agony inside of me had me bent over, gaspin' and rubbing my chest, "This is Game Over?"

Alice's Wicked Witch-of-the-West boots got into the frame of my lowered eyes, and her voice got totally into my head, "No, this _is Game On_, Eddie."

Even though it was crystal goddamn clear, I had to ask, I _had_ to know for certain, "Where the fuck is she?"

"Italy."

_Okay, good enough place for a summer-out before colleg__e, or sightseein' in some stinky old churches and shit, maybe. Yeah._

_Right._

"Just exactly _where_ the fucking hell is she, in Italy?"

"Volterra."

"_Goddamn it!"_

"You need to talk to Carl."

"No I fuckin' don't! I need Bella. I need her _now!_ I need her right here before I fucking hijack the nearest plane and offer my useless self instead of her!"

"Fat lot of good that'd do you," Alice the Farmer's Almanac scoffed even while she eyed my collection of scrabbled-together dinner plates like stealin' that trashy shit was on her Bucket List.

"They want you and me and Jazz. Deliver yourself and you pretty much lay our Demon's Own Disney Land right at their feet."

"So, what? I'm just supposed to… _wait?_"

"That is exactly what you need to do, Eddie."

I crushed the counter with my hands that were all clawed Jaws-of-Death, _not life._ "Just answer me this. Is she takin' us to the dogs?" Because I couldn't shake the really bad feelin' in my gut.

"More like the Doges Palace.

"And I mean it, Eddie."

_Fuck, __mean what? I was already castrated by impotence._

"You _cannot_ follow her."

The world imploded and my entire cosmos dimmed. Fuck if the trailer didn't go all blackout, too, with the dementia that sent me… _mad._

_~~ll~~_

The after-effects of the slick mickey musta been pharmaceutical grade because next thing I knew, I was flat out on the living room floor with Paw slapping me on the face and Alice was nowhere to be seen.

_Thank Fuck for that._

I sat up straightaway, then stood shakily.

He started rummaging around his flannel, and I thought he was gonna pull out a stethoscope and order me to get ready for another cunting physical, but all Paw came up with was the soggy stub of a Cuban. "_We-ell_, Son, y'all are exhibiting all the signs of-"

I cut him off before he could condemn me to listening to more of his _All Creatures_ diagnoses. "Just tell me what she gave me. And no more O'Beef-Wank-Kenobi shit, either."

_Now he was the lookin' at me like I was speakin' in tongues._

"No more vet-speak; give it to me in layman's terms."

Inevitably, Paw conjured a pack of the Frito Lays from who-the-fuck-knew-where.

I snapped my fingers in front of my sire's face, and he crushed the bag in his fists before focusing on me shrewdly.

"Near as I can figger it, those years ago when Aro,"—_Asshole_- "took my venom sample… which directly relates to y'all's… someone used it to engineer a bio-weapon specifically aimed to knock you out, Eddie."

"Our toxin is my fuckin' WMD?"

"Yeah, and whoever made the roofie is Saddam Insane."

"_Sadistic motherfucker!"_ I railed and seriously considered shattering the coffee table into the nearest palm tree, but I recalibrated at the last second. Frankly, I'd trashed enough shit already, and I wanted to preserve this as livin' sculpture covered in Bella's bits and pieces.

A hand solidly clamped down on my shoulder, "You just need some time, Eddie."

The intent in my eyes and the kill-thrill that curled my fingers had nothin' remotely to do with taking a time-fucking-out and _everything_ to do with getting' Bella back. I shoved him off, "I'm gonna make gatorbait of _al dente_ Demetri!"

Pacing back and forth, Carl made sure he was between me and the front door, "You know she made it out of Dodge for a reason."

_Sure did, and I didn't give a shit at this point._

Then he put word to my worst fear, "Maybe she ain't who you thought she was… why don't you mull that over for a bit? It all done worked out pretty conveniently… _yessiree._"

_No. Fucking. Way._

Pain lanced me—either from Carl's observation, or the backlash of bein' drugged, or maybe it was simply that Alice had returned-and not the I-need-a-Goody's-Headache-Powder variety.

This was full-blown, drawn and quartered dismemberment shit.

Slamming out onto the porch, I almost steamrolled over the Prescient Prattler. Would have liked to, anyway. But she stopped me with a hand on my arm. She met my frantic, searching eyes and said nothin' as I fucking freaked out, "I don't care what _he _says!" I pointed my finger back at the trailer and Paw. "She ain't a traitor! _Oh, Christ Almighty! _How the hell can she be safe over there?"

'Course I wasn't gonna get nothin' from the Failure of a Farmer's Almanac, except for, apparently, some southern hospitality. "Let me get you a drink, Eddie."

_Make it a double, triple…fuck_, "Bring the bottle."

Stomping back up the steps, I saddled onto the porch couch.

My phone drilled into my hip.

I twisted and shifted it out.

"Don't even _think_ about it."

My fingers had drifted over Bella's numbers, wanting to… _needing_ to…

Ditch-Witch-Bitch slapped my cell shut and drilled her finger into my temple, "_You can't contact her._ Eddie! This I gotta keep saying?"

"Not even to-"

"_No! _No phone sex… _Jesus Christ._"

Well, _shee-it._ If phone sex had been my last card, and even that was taken off the table, then I was definitely gonna take my chances with the European Vacation thing.

_Yeah._

Takin' my key fob from my pocket, I went back to Plan A and pressed down on the button that had my truck unlocked and waitin'.

I was all the way down the driveway when the Spook spoke, "I don't think it's a good idea for you to go off half-loaded."

"No worse than half-baked Bella in Italy."

"Yes, Eddie… it _is_ worse."

With a deadly smirk and a large adjustment, I hollered back, "Who're you calling half-loaded anyways?" _Like that was even a possibility._

_Because I was _fully_ cocked, and on my way._

_~~ll~~_

Charleston International Airport my fuckin' asshole—_whatever, more like Jizzper's_. IHOP was more int'l than this puddle jumper's piece of shit non-destination.

"Security!"

I relished the fight to come with this underpaid, overblown and unattractively blousy bitch who spoke into her earpiece like _she _was the goddamn sheriff.

I had half a mind to tell her I already done been shot by the sheriff-_the real one_-and it'd been little more than a stinger that ricocheted off my arm.

Instead I simply leaned over and replaced her earbud with my low, strict voice, "I can hear you." I hooked my thumbs into my jeans and cocked my head.

I tipped back onto my heels while her heartbeat went jet-fueled. Another grin that reeked of very unpleasant deeds done to fleshy wastes of space like her had the Rent-A-Cop/Rent-A-Dyke—_same diff._—goin' for her sidearm that was loaded with rubber bullets. "Sucks. don't it?"

Confused-as her kind always were-her eyes took on that Jersey cow look… pretty much deaf-mute-and-_moooo._

"Let me guess," I rounded on her and lifted her dime-a-dollar cuffs off her muffin-topped hips. "You didn't make the cut for the force. So now you get your inner Cagney and Lacey on whenever the alarms go off."

She gulped.

I smirked.

I whispered, "_You think I'm a bad boy?"_

Fuck, her stupid _blink-blink-blink_ made me long for Chazz's honest-to-goodness beat-ass bullshit.

I strolled away from her while she continued to chaw cud after me.

At the Departure/Arrival screens, I arrowed right onto the first flight that would take me outta this godforsaken hellhole I relished to call home.

_A jaunt to Hotlanta, a jitney to __New York__, and then I'd be just as airborne as Anthrax._

To think of Bella, with Jane… _Demetri… ARO!_

I hauled ass to the ticket counter and… _fuck me... _of course Bubba was Johnny-on-the-spot. His bulwark takin' up the entire concourse.

Ignorin' him, I spat onto my fingertips so I could separate the hundreds I unfolded from my money-clip.

_He cuffed me on the head._

Through the ringin' in my ears, I listened to the reservation clerk-agent-_whatever_ tellin' me Southwestern Airlines was all but shut down. _CUNTS!_ They hadn't even had their franchise a week and already their tin-junk-jets were fallin' to pieces?

"I'm sorry, Sir," Missus Lemme-Show-You-My Cleavage leaned in all conspiratorial and shit, while Em tried to sever the tendons at the backs of my knees. I pretended to glom onto her chesty acreage and sexmatized Ms. Cheap-Tit-Fuck closer. "There was a six foot wide," she blushed and giggled and thought _she'd_ captured _me—which had as-fuckin'-if titty-tatted all over it_, "_gash _in the 747."

"Your quality control sucks," I spat, and I wasn't just referrin' to her lumpy implants.

What I really wanted to do was give free reign to my territorial tear-up, but instead I heaved off the counter with a final derogatory non-glance at the chick's too-buoyant flotation devices. I had half a mind to tell her organic was the only way to go, but I didn't really give two shits.

Clumpin' away with the new Terrier in Town tarryin' at my heels—aka Bubba—all's I could think about was Bella, and how she'd better be over the goddamn pond already. Because, _I swear!_ Anything stupid like a plane crash? _Anything, anything at all… if Any Fuckin' Harm came to her I'd go on such a terrorizin' trip the entire world would know just how abominable vampires really were; none of this sparkly, 'yes ma'am, no ma'am', vegetarian shit._

"Fly my fuckin' friendly skies," I sneered at the next female guard whose hardass, boot-shaped face shoved right up to mine. I licked my lips and my eyes turned totally black as I blatantly crushed her pathetic goddamn can of pepper spray in my hand, which curled right around hers.

She blew on the bruises while I watched the blue-black contusion grow and then her blood-scent sickened me.

_I wanted Bella, only Bella._

Not anyone else and for dang sure not some butch-bitch with a hard-on for bad boys.

Irascible and about to get my ass thrown in lock-up, I stumbled into the brawny brick wall of Bubba who smelled of…

"Fucking Ben Gay… again?"

"Hey now, Bella beat me up some good yesterday, bro. Don't be lookin' at me like that. Borrowed your Gun Oil for the other deeds."

"You fuckin' spooged with my lube?"

"Yeah, I jerked it with your bean-cream, you gotta problem with that?"

"You readin' that Kindle queer romance shit at the same time?'

"What of it?" He raised his chin a notch and he was just lucky I didn't knock his friggin' block off.

"You need the Wicked Masturbator, dude. They're in the storage shed. Maw stocked up on the Boy's Toys when she replaced Bella's rabbit after I nicked it."

His smile was way too fuckin' happy at that, so I had no recourse but to bring him down to reality, "But next time you leave _my_ rocket launcher lubricant alone."

He had the good graces to look sheepish.

I pointed my finger inta his chest, "And do yourself a favor… _Hustler_, asshole."

"Yeah, _yeah._ Whatever. I don't know what you got against literature, Bro."

"Cliterature, more like."

"Fuck off."

"Well, I was tryin' to." I finished off silently, _you fuckin' turd I cain't scrape off my shitkickers._

Then I caught wind of someone I really didn't want to face…_ever_. "Fuck, Emmett, _cover me!_"

"What now?" he boomed across the itty-bitty concourse with all the subtlety of a bullhorn.

"Fucking DASHER!"

"_No_ shittin' way."

"Yes _friggin'_ way, now haul ass!"

"EDDIE CULLEN!"

All foot traffic stopped.

Hell, even the baggage carousel coughed and hacked to a halt at the sound of her high pitched screech.

Dasher's Double D's proceeded her—bet if she were a jogger she'd get black eyes with them things.

Short jet hair and a smear of lipstick, and Bubba was the one backin' up behind me.

_C'est __la fucking vie._

She went all woman-scorned, and the crowd gathered round for its free-fer-all entertainment. "You just fucked me and left me? And what was up with that hickey you gave me? _Teeth marks?_"

I warded her off and _finally_ thanked fuck Bella was out of the country for this blow-out. "Err, _sorry?_"

I dunno, what the fuck else was I s'posed to say?

"_Sorry? SORRY?_" Dasher danced away then reeled around, "You got a lot of makin' up to do, Buster."

I snorted, Bubba bent over to laugh and then… _well…_

"Dasher, _dahlin'"_ I laid on my drawl heavy and hot and thick, thinkin' this was the one way to get her offa my dick. "What you gonna do now is turn right round and walk out them doors… _forget you ever got the first chance to fuck me._"

She blinked like a bovine and padded her way out without one more look.

Bubba clapped me on the shoulder with a 'job well done'. _Good fuckin' riddance to that._

On the way out of CHS I terrorized the coffee cabana chick, and Bubba met me stride for stride.

"What, you want my dick now, too?"

"No, Dickweed, I been told to tail you."

"'S'what I said."

"You got a problem."

"Yeah, I do. Starts with fucking letter 'B', so… you gonna just be a lummox? You wanna play the alphabet game with me?"

"Bella."

"Yeah, it's fucking Bella! What the fuck? _Jesus!_"

Before I knew it, Bubba botched my plan even further with his remedy, "Let's head to Mama's, get a brew, play some checkers."

"_Fuckin' CHECKERS?"_ The hot and humid air sucked down onto us outside. "I want to mangle and maim, and you want to play some old fogey's game?"

He kind of looked between me and him as if to say, 'We-ell, we are pushin' the numbers up there, bro.'

Regardless, at the very least I'd settle for more whoop ass on Redneck Handsy Randsy… and if Chester the cheese-dick showed his florid face, too, that'd be two for one…

"Could hit the Southern Belle instead."

_~~ll~~_

"So I see you brought your back-up singer, you think you can't handle me alone?" Jizzper was already front and center stripper-stage… chawin', drinkin', chillin'… _charming._

"The fuck I can't take you," Bubba scoffed.

I highly doubted that. "You just done told me you had to break out the Icy Hot because of Bella, braw."

"I went easy on her, her bein' a lady and all."

"Uh huh, right. And that's the only reason she washed the floor with your ass."

"Don't make me coldcock you to prove I can take you down like Hulk Hogan on amphetamines."

"Whatever, Chewie."

By this time, we'd spun into our chairs on either side of Jizz and started tankin' back the 'refreshments' he'd ordered for us, jeerin' back and forth around him.

Bubba slammed his beer down and finger-signaled for two more. "You wanna play that game?"

"Looks like it, don't it, Wookie."

"You're just sore because now you're flyin' Hands Solo."

Jizz approved by takin' his midnight-colored eyes off the pole dancer to wink once and nod twice.

I showed my _disapproval_ by reachin' round and cuffin' Bubba on the side of his head, giving him a case of cauliflower ear."You better keep your motherfuckin' trap shut now, Bro."

I kicked my foot under Jizzper's chair legs and knocked him over four feet or so while my low voice carried, "And you can keep your comments to yourself, too, Jango-Fuck."

He just looked at me, _silently_, righted his seat and took out a ten-spot for the brunette who was grindin' her pelvis almost on top of our round table_._

Blue lights and a blacked-out stage and waitresses on high heels, all Tits on Tap.

_Saliva_ was playin' in the seedy joint, and wasn't that just appropriate for this place with all the human assholes packed in like steer in a sidecar. Time was, I used come here for my fuck and suck, no strings attached, 'specially not after I did away with them flimsy g-strings the chicks pranced about it.

But now?

Here?

This was Bubba's idea of a diversion to take my mind off'n Bellla? _The Southern Belle, so-called Gentleman's__ Club?_

The next time the scantily-clad dancer swiveled her hips in my face, I beckoned her down to me and gave her the score, "Listen, _sweetheart_, I ain't lookin' for a ride on the Tits-A-Whirl tonight or any other night, so you can just sashay the hell out of here."

I softened my 'no thank you, ma'am' with a wad of Benjamins to her breasts; but I didn't look, and I made damn sure my fingertips touched as little of her possible.

Jizz was still Helen Killer mute.

Across the table, Bubba was watchin' me with some kind of stupid, goofy, gratified smile on his lips.

"You mind tellin' me how this coochie-coo circus is supposed to be helpin' me, Skidmark?"

Bubba relaxed into his chair and slipped his bottle between his two fingers, an action that evidently meant 'come on over here, girls, and give me a lapdance' because suddenly, he was aswarm with chicks.

I batted the broads out of the way.

Frownin' and rubbing a smear of lipstick off his cheek, Bubba advised, "You need to slow your conniption fit, bro."

"You tryin' to give me a life lesson here? Because I'm pretty damn sure instead of me bein' here, while Bella gallivants all over Christ-the-fuck-knows-where Italy, she should be ridin' _my_ pole on the front porch. So don't be thinking this porny show of poledancers is helping out one iota."

Now _he_ seemed to have caught the deaf-and-dumbs from Jazz because he simply looked at me, impelling me on. "Yeah. So, if there's a moral to your story here," I swept my arm far and wide from overflowin' bar to overblown blonds, "I ain't getting it."

"You done yet?"

"I ain't decided," I grouched.

I added my empty to our growing collection and knocked down another, backhanding my mouth and glaring at Bubba.

He cleared his throat, eased the longnecks out of the way, and put his elbows on the table, "I'm just sayin', things could be worse."

Incredulously I gaped, "Worse fuckin' how?"

He shrugged, "Leastways Bella's not up there on stage gettin' groped on a nightly basis."

"_What?"_ My voice broke at that point, because… _what… the… fuck?_ "That's your Commandment, you cunt?"

Jizz's shoulders were shakin' as if he was withholdin' laughter.

I wanted to beat his face to an unbloody pulp, too.

Helpless against the goddamn fools, I just shook my head, "Don't give up your day job, _Charlton Heston._"

"Ain't got one to give up, braw."

"True," Junior's bestowed his one-word attaboy, then graced us with a few more, "And remember 'Moses _was_ the first blogger'."

"Yeah, well Bubba _still_ ain't Moses; hell, he can't hardly work the Twitter feed."

Little Miss Hot Tits just couldn't seem to stay away… she'd trotted right on over to us and swung her breasts enough that it felt like I was lookin' down the barrel of a titty-tassled kaleidescope. As I craned away onto the rear chair legs to get outta reach of her hula-boobs, I felt Jizz clank his glass against my refresher.

That's when I noticed him snappin' a rubberband bracelet like he was wearin' the latest accessory from Gay Crew on his wrist. "What's that in aid of?"

He took a swig of Jack or Jim from his cloudy glass, "Reminds me not to kill humans."

"That work?"

He gave a shoulder shift in response.

"You been wearin' that how long?"

"Since '95."

"1895?"

"Yee-ah, started as a piece o' twine in those days," he drawled and turned his eyes off the Goody-Two-Boobs still roundhousin' her nipples right in our personal space.

"Huh," I scratched along my jaw, "So even when you were a killin' machine for Maria?"

"Yup."

"Not much of a deterrent then, right?"

Jazz twirled a wet toothpick round his tongue, got a bead on the bottle-blond's carotid and slid a lethal smile my way, "Some people just beggin' for it, know what I mean?"

_Fuckin' Amen to that._

With a move as quick as lightning, he jumped to his feet and threw a bunch of balled-up bills on the tabletop to cover our tab.

"The fuck now?"

"Alice," his body was practically pulsatin' with the proximity of his woman.

My swagger was fully back in place on our way out, and I knew this because babes were fallin' all over themselves to put themselves _in_ my way, mistaking my ruthless sneer as a randy come-on.

And that did my head in because it was getting' goddamn hard to walk with all the pussy bein' laid at my feet left, right, and center.

Leavin' the tangle of female flesh knotted behind us, we got to the rear exit. Sure enough, Malediction Malice was outside, a raven-colored streetwalker who looked at home in the shabby, back alley surrounds with her torn fishnets, tight, black dress, and lacey, fingerless gloves.

Jizz guided her away from the filth of the bar's sooty walls, his hands sifting up and down her back to settle on her hips while she tipped her face, ready and greedy for the long, hungering kiss he gave her.

I let them go at it for as long as I could bear before I cut in, "You got some Breakin' News in that brain of yours?"

Half gold, half midnight, and old as time, her wide eyes skated over me, "They're coming."

I took in a great gust of air, "The full guard?"

"Yessss," her voice a sinister hiss.

This fuckin' hopeful thing filled my chest, "Bella, too?"

Nostraharmus nodded, her creepy look intense and knowing.

"When?"

"Next week."

_One week… a fucking entire week without Bella?_

I planted a palm to the concrete building and felt the gloss of slime and moss seep against my hand. I retracted into myself, because I needed to keep my shit together, and it was time to goddamn take charge of this battle.

Standing straight, I gave a final rub to my chest then strode to the Bronco, the others fallin' in behind me. "Time to rally the troops."

Alice's laugh was less delightful and more like a damnation when she saw what I had planned. "We really _are_ goin' to the dogs."

"Fuck yeah," Bubba banged on the roof of my truck, causin' a bearclaw-sized dent that he quickly popped out before I could nut him.

Junior decided to grace us with some insight, "Hope someone remembers to bring the pooper scoopers."

His bestowal of wisdom was met with knuckle thumps and a round of _Hell Yeahs._

I was gettin' into a hardcore hatin', hellraisin' frame of mind…

Then Bubba gave his one and a half cents, "Aw yeah, bring on the Stormtroopers!"

_He_ was met with blank stares and raised eyebrows.

"Why y'all lookin' at me like that? It rhymes, man, and you called me Chewbacca and shit…" His voice drifted off. But came right back when he blurted, "Princess _Leah_?"

Our frowns and headshakes compounded his discomfiture.

"Aw, _fuckit_. Fine. _Let's go round up the fleabags and kick some Volturi ass!_"

At that, I fired up the Bronco and our war whoops and hollers bandied out into the night that was just gettin' good and started.

* * *

~Eddie would fuckin' love it if y'all would leave him a review ;)!~

**Chapter note:**

Eddie mighta been a bit more inflammatory than usual in this chapter (not that he isn't always full of spit and vinegar). However, in the sage words of Viola: _Eddie's got a big fuckin' mouth and an even bigger set of worries at the moment—one thing about Eddie is he's an equal op stinker when it comes to being a wiseass—after all, who and/or what hasn't he insulted in the past two years. _So there you go. I could water him down and give you DC-lite, but I'm not going to ;).

**New viddy by Bell J to **_**KOL Closer **_**(and, damn, it's hot as hell!):**

_youtube . com/watch?v=cJNOz9EwonU_

**Don't forget to check the blogs! Link on my profile ****.**

**My new story, **_**Love Advocated:**_

Complete! It's dark and delicious and deviously humorous…oh, _and Edward has wings!_ Yeah…._mmmmmm_.

**Many thanks to BellaFlan for pimping DC's in her **_**Stigmata Tomata!**_** Kidding, it's Stigmata Tomato**…she's very, very cool so hopefully she won't kill me over that. Also, if you haven't read her _Becoming Bella Swan _yet, you really don't know what a bizarre, hysterical, unbelievable story you are missing!

_Cheers, Rie~_


	34. Old Home Week

So much southern lovin' for my brilliant fucking betas: Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta, and extra hardcore cheers to Miss Heather Bella who edited this chapter too.

Disclaimer thingy: The Cainwhore Cullens are mine, I tell you! Twilight is not…no infringement and all that yadda yadda intended.

(GK gets a blue ribbon for her down-low, lowcountry information gathering on this one, love ya', babe)

~~Kisses and probably naughtier stuff for all the reviews and faves, pics and fun. Thank you! That shit makes me so friggin' happy ;). Does somethin' for Eddie, too… So, we're goin' to the Dogs, y'all. And maybe a little bit of NSFW for you as well~~

**Song:**

_Little Lion Man, _Mumford and Sons

youtube . com/watch?v=lLJf9qJHR3E

* * *

**Old Home Week**

For some fucking unfathomable reason, Alice had called shotgun on the drive up to The Creek…Goose Creek, to be exact.

We'd just passed a small, rusted, sheet metal joint that was about swallowed in scraggy crabgrass when the Pissy Pygmy turned her back against the truck door. By its sign hangin' half off the siding, the shack was called the C+B, and advertised Pork + Beef & Deer Processing. Smelled like a recipe for salmonella to me.

Processin' some damn notion or other, Alice got that kooky look on her face and I friggin' knew I didn't want to hear whatever the fuck she was about to spew forth. "Whatever it is, save it, Sister. I ain't in no mood to have you digging 'round my frontal lobe with your fingernails, or to listen to any of your 'Crossing Over' BS."

Fingering through her criminal's catch-all, Alice pulled out a tube of who-the-hell-knew-what—coulda been eye of Newt; hopefully, _really_, the eye of Mike Newton—and peeled off the price tag, which she precisely placed inside a coin purse with all her other Lindsay Lohanded mementos.

_Oh_, it was just lipstick.

She put some on and pursed her lips, "I think you're going to want to know this, Eddie."

I groaned and hit the gas harder, aimin' for a toad that sat fat and unmoving on the tar, "Why's that?"

"Don't you want to understand why I pushed you and Bella together from the very first time you met me?"

Bein' absolutely no help at all, Bubba and Jizz sat like deaf, dumb lumps of mute shit in the back.

There wasn't even a Fart Boy to take up the slack.

Finally, I answered, "Lemme guess: It wasn't out of the goodness of your heart."

"A kindhearted matchmaker, I'm not," she sinisterly agreed. "See, your bond to the boys is strong. Your love for M'Esme and Carl is powerful. But what you feel for Bella is… _transcendent._"

"You knew from the fuckin' beginning this was all gonna happen," my low voice was proof of just how much I wanted to reach over and tear her arms off, followed by her skinny legs.

Folding her hands in her lap, Alice was the very blackest harbinger of doom, "Oh yes, for a very long time." She seemed giddy with delight at the thought. "So Bella and you had to be together, and she was meant to be created by you into what she now is… your immortal mate."

Excitement showed in the way her fingers fidgeted like nightcrawlers on fishing hooks, "I got sick and tired of running from those assholes, you know?" She paused with a truly sickening grin, "And the Volturi would never leave such a talented couple alone. So they'd come, one way or another. And with this extra bit of… _motivation_—your unbreakable affinity for Bella—I know you'll move heaven and earth to make sure we win.

"There's always Plan B, too."

I tore through the seat with my clawed fingers, "Plan B?"

"I figured you and Bella as a matched pair would be far more valuable than me and Jazz." Just as I was about to lift my foot off the gas and slam it through her shins, she halted me with, "But we won't let it come to that, will we?"

"Why are you tellin' me this?" I twisted the wheel until it was almost mangled out of shape. "Why the _FUCK_ are you tellin' me this now?"

"Because, the stage is set."

"This ain't a fuckin' play," I sneered, foul rage causing me to clench my jaw, and my arms becoming so tense, they were painful bundles of muscle.

"And I'm not playing," she said. "Besides, with Bella over there in Italy, I know you're not going to do anything to jeopardize her touch-and-go situation."

Through my anger, I let one lingerin' desire escape: to buy me a fuckin' plane, get to Italy… find Bella, save her… _touch her again._

I swung my fist out and sheared the headrest off Alice's seat like my hand was a guillotine. Lucky she was so goddamn short; my blow only brushed the top of her spiky hair.

To spite me, she continued as if I wasn't two seconds away from tossing her tiny body out onto the blacktop that was steaming like cow manure from the night's humid heat, "And you're driving, so you can't really take a crack at me."

I rasped, "I could crash the car."

She smiled eerily, "You love this piece of shit too much."

"Why? Why'd you engineer all this?"

She met Jizz's eyes in the sideview, and I could see her face transform from bitter to peaceful, "Because I've loved him all my life, and this was the only way for us all to be free of the Volturi."

Then she turned her startling irises to mine, "_Because_ I could control something for once in my life…"

All the fury washed out of me like I'd sprung a leak, leavin' me boneless and so goddamned tired. Sittin' next to me wasn't the hardnosed, hardcore bitch vampire I'd gotten used to hating, but a little lost girl who'd been committed by her parents, killed by a deranged demon, and forced to whore herself out to him while she waited decades to meet the man she knew would be hers.

And a woman who very fuckin' obviously would do anything in her power to make sure no motherfucker ever messed with her or her man... _ever again. _

"Yeah," was all I said.

Bubba decided it was high time he put paid to the sickenin' Hemingtwat Hallmark moment with, "Bet you wished you had one of them Kleenex on you now, hey Eddie?"

"_Ssssh, _braw, I'm listening to the wind through your ears," I cracked. He leaned forward to flick the back of my head, but I grabbed his wrist and gave him an Indian Burn while demanding, "Beer Me, Bitch."

I sipped the brew with its lukewarm, tinny taste, relishing the warm glide down my dry throat and almost—_almost—_spat that shit out when we passed the Southern Baptist on Rhett Avenue. This week's winning sign? _Alpha is here!_

Leah and Bible studies? I snorted, _I highly doubted that._

Yessir, The Creek was another realm entirely to Cainwhore. First of all, it stank like a goddamn pigpen; either from the burp-farts from that stank-ass Westvaco factory vacatin' its exhaust fumes at the side of the Cooper River, or because of all the mutts runnin' the streets. Every other house had a chain link fence, presumably to keep the dingoes in (or out).

For sure, there was different species of supernatural hillbillies out here.

I slowed as we came up to a bar called The Waterin' Hole, pure and simple. Their claim to fame? 'Pool Tournament. Horseshoes. Scotch Doubles.'

I knew we had the right place when a dirt bike-_with a jerry-rigged sidecar_—came into view, pulled up sideways to the bike rack. On its ass-end rode this bumper sticker: _Dog is my copilot_. I was pretty sure the owner meant that literally.

Hooch, hounds, and horseshoes on a hot-as-Hades Saturday night? Fuckin' A.

Apparently the doghouse was packed, and its split seams spilled some of the Carolina/Cajun coonhounds out into the parkin' lot.

They congregated around a jacked-up, half-truck, half-flat bed, ringed by clouds of misty cigarette smoke and the smell of cheap beer on tap.

I got enough traction to jet a cascade of gravel over the gathered Giant Schnauzers, and Bubba hauled himself out the window with a whoop and holler that'd put the natives to shame, pounding another dent into the roof of mah Bronco.

There were yips, calls and snarls… until Leah plugged her mouth with two fingers, her whistle putting a stopper on their parvo psychosis.

"Foaming at the mouth," Alice gave an appreciative, gleaming grin… all of her saber-sharp teeth on show.

"One might call them 'rabid'," Jizz alighted, then helped his lady out.

"Hey, homegirl," Bubba sidled up to the top dogess.

I thought he'd said _houndgirl_, and as soon as I rounded the Beast's hood, she acted like he didn't even exist as she made for me, all long, obsidian hair swingin' and hips swayin'.

Crushing my empty can, I tossed it to the receptacle overflowin' next to the wettin' well's doors then tugged at my tee, shifted from foot to foot.

_What could I say? I just had that I-wanna-fuck-you effect on all females. _

Stoppin' short, the Great Dane Dame crooked her finger, "C'mere, Eddie, I got something to show you."

I was one hundred and ten percent certain I didn't need to be eyeballing what she wanted to display.

"C'mon now, don't be shy," she shook that same finger at me.

All the others were gum flappin' and jaw-chawing; hell, Miss Malicious already had a bowl stuffed and smokin' between her lips.

A plastic cup of tonight's firewater was placed in my hand. I was shoved forward, face first into the grafted-together Wolfmobile II.

"It's our tank. Welded it myself. You like it, _big boy_?" Leah sashayed up to me. "I'm very… _handy._"

I drank the moonshine and looked over the claptrapped truck. The front was nothin' but a Hertz truck cab—some artistic sumbitch had graffiti'd on top, _Hurtz, Don't It?—_and the bed was a corrugated steel, open air platform with an iron parallel bar. _With leather leashes hangin' off it._

"For dogs on the go," Leah smoothed her hand over the tires and lovingly flecked some pebbles off the clean, diamond-embossed steel.

I admired her handiwork and drank some more, until I remembered… I was on the warpath.

Settling my cup carefully on the platform, I spun slowly so all my force was aimed in a backhand, at her mouth.

She blocked me clean, holding up her fists like Leah Ali, "You want this? Bring it, _bad boy._"

"You _fucking_ gave Bella the drug!" I cursed the fact I couldn't _really_ hit a girl... unless her name was Alice, or Chelsea, Jane, Irina…et-fuckin'-cetera.

"Technically, Signore Demetri handed off the roofie."

"I don't give a _fuck_ about the technicalities." Hackles raised all around us. Claws became daggers, fists were brass knuckles. Jizz cracked his neck, Bubba bent down low and braced himself. The mangy mongrels shivered, crackling between their forms.

Undaunted, Leah walked right up to me. Her heated hand forged against my icy fist, melting it. "Someone was gonna git you, sooner or later, Eddie." She cocked her head, and the dark diamonds of her eyes held mine, "Who'd you rather it be? Some bitch who couldn't give two shits about saving you, _loving you_? Or our Bella? Huh?"

She laughed loudly and threw my hand away from her, "You can do what you like to me!" Her arms raised to the Heavens, her eyes stabbed mine, "Just like you, I would do _anything_ for my girl." She pointed her forefinger to my chest, "You got that?

"Now then," Alpha-in-charge stepped off, "what's up?"

My vision skated to Alice. Leah bit, "She ain't no Pet Psychic, is she?"

"Nah, she can't see y'all's futures."

"Good."

"Bella's in Italy. And it ain't for her gap year before college."

Leah led with her clenched hands hitting out before Sam placed his large palms upon her shoulders. She gentled instantly. Her eyes dipped down, her eyelids did the swamp bottom, reptilian crisscross as she took her man's attention and let it arrest her.

She tucked her face into Sam's neck and hushed, "Thank you, bébé."

Puttin' her game face on, Leah held onto the hangin' straps on her anti-Humvee. "Don't you be worryin' about Bella. If anyone can handle herself…" she tightened the collars over the towbar and looked back. "Speakin' of handlin'… _you need a hand?_" Her eyes got all hot and horny. "'Cause you're just so dang… _fuckable._ Oughta wrap you up and market you and sell your fine ass." She looked over her brethren, "What? You whelps ain't gelded, surely y'all can appreciate the magnificent male form when you see it, right?"

"Uh…" I concentrated on my bottomless pit of swill, "No thanks. _Errr_, everyone, that is."

"Oh, you're so fricking adorable," the stray who wanted to pound my puppy smiled. "I know you ain't gonna cheat on Bella, baby."

"Jesus, Leah! Leave 'im alone already." Ja-cub darkened the doorway of the saloon.

"Oh, you wanna be the leader of the pack now?"

"Not fucking likely."

"Wimp."

"Wench."

"What-_ever._"

Of loose gait, all ungainly and still cuttin' his milk teeth, Paul trickled out next, Katrina on his arm like a platinum shawl.

Our how-dos were abridged:

"All right."

"Yeah… _tight, _man." His mouth was just above Katrina's ear.

_I liked the diffident mofo._

Latrina spent about no time lookin' me over before roving her eyes back up Wild Man's body to his face.

Turning away just as they started making out, I tried so fucking hard… _not to think of Bella._

Jacob's mug square and center had me reelin' back. "Saw something today, made think of you."

_Oh Christ, not him__, too._

"Eddie's Porn and Pawn Emporium! Didn't know you'd opened up shop. You got a hand in every pie, don't ya'?"

_Yeah, that's right…__ PIE, not prick._

I scratched my jaw, had I bought the Porn-porium? I needed to check my portfolio. Fuckin' regardless, I oughta be collecting royalties… them usin' my name and all to sell those… _Jackrabbits_.

"Yeah, well, I heard there's a Handsome Hound Resort up there in Fork Shoals," I met him jab for jab, "but I think the Pooch Palace suits y'all better."

The shapeshifting swamp fox bumped my fist, "More like hooch palace."

"Cooch Castle!" Someone yelled from the canine crowd to guffaws and back-slaps all around.

"We gotta talk," I said to Princess Pinscher and Jacob.

Silent Sam shepherded us down the parkin' lot and around the corner of the bar where a half ton was backed up. The truck bed was toppled by a leanin' tower of tires. I kicked at the sturdy wheels, "What's all this then?"

His arms crossed over his hefty chest, Sam shook his hair out of his eyes like a sheepdog, "Get money for recycling them."

I could respect that reusin' shit, "Right on, man."

"Honest labor," Sententious Sam nodded.

"Got yourself a good cottage industry goin' on?"

_Make enough to take care of my own_, he sent to me without words, his gaze turning soft and gentle when he glanced over at Leah.

"Good deal." I sank back onto the hot tailgate. "We got us a situation."

"Bella?" Jacob pressed his fists into balls so tight I worried he might pop a vein.

And my—well, fuckin' seriously, _whatever the hell anybody wanted to call it—_heart dropped down to my stomach. "Yeah." I stamped my foot and looked out over the melee that included vampires and were-creatures, shorin' myself up. "We're gonna need some serious whoop-ass.

"In one week, we're gonna battle royale with the Vultures."

Leah leaned into Sam, twining around him like a long, tawny ribbon, "Whatever you need, Eddie."

For once there was no innuendo, and there could be no goddamn subterfuge about what was breathin' down our necks. "Some of us are gonna die."

"I don't give a fuck 'bout that shit," Cubby Puppy whirred his arms back as if loosenin' up for round one.

"We-ell, you're still just a youngin'," I told the overgrown Beta boy. "Y'all need to think about what you're agreein' to."

Leah and Sam shared a quiet, indelible instant.

_Tell us where and when_, Sam jerked his chin to me.

Before we'd even arranged the next day's meet-up at Mama Brown's, Jacob was barking and bellowing, "_Aw yeah!_ Paws, claws, scales and tails! We gonna pound some deadbeat vamp ass!"

Bubba, Jizz, and Alice started closin' in on him.

"Dudes! I meant the _other_ vampires!"

_~~ll~~_

"Dibs on Jane, that mental cow gave me a fucking arrhythmia last time she had me on the floor," Katrina interrupted.

"Bagsy on Alec!" A clipped voiced caught my attention just as the screen door banged open and Garrett strode through in his fawn-colored suede coverings, his sand dune hair a right mess after hauling ass from wherever he'd been nomaddin' it.

_Bagsy?_ What the frig did that mean? Only bags I knew were of the Glad variety we used to stash our hash.

He winked at Rose, then growled at Bubba who threw him into a headlock that broke apart with low laughs, "Took you fuckin' long enough to get here, asshole."

"The Lewis and Clark isn't what it used to be, Emmett. Do you realize they've got KOA's all up and down that track nowdays?"

Rose swung her platinum ponytail back over her halfshirt and grabbed another handful of beers from Caleb. I accepted two and gestured to the back booth, "Think you can get rid of the Snapes over there?"

Bubs, Alice, Jizz and me had arrived an hour earlier to set up shop at Mama Brown's only to have found Missus Snape and her young pet—otherwise known as Library Snape—canoodlin' in the furthest corner of the Meat and Three.

Seein' those two black-haired, witchcraft worshipping lovers holdin' hands and leaning into each had hurt my fuckin' chest. Rubbing that hole Bella had left hadn't remedied a damn thing neither.

Bubba had thought the sure fire cure-all for my woe was a round of checkers and an elixir to soothe the ache: high proof Wild Turkey chasers.

Din't matter.

Everywhere I'd looked, Bella was there. _Bella shoulda been fucking there, right next to me._ And I'd been unable to even channel my frustration into jerkin' my junk because…

_Because…_

_What if she died and I never saw her again? _

Overturning the table, I'd stampeded around the small room, bangin' into the bar and throwing chairs out of my way until Mama had looped her big, warm arms around me.

_Y'all hush now._

She'd set me down to one of the cracked and creased leather benches.

Mama had talked to me with her eyes, set deep and dark as blood diamonds among umber laughlines. Her knotted hands had stopped an inch away from my face, but I'd felt her warmth as she got herself good and inside me. _I got dem blues painted round da winders'n doors for a reason, ward off dem evil spirits. No'ne be touchin' us here. _

Her amulet had rested between the mountainous mounds of her breasts, on an ornate woven rope, its language called upon the Qur'an; Mama walked her fingers over the lodestone as she looked at me.

Her gnarly hands had joined with air, her voice one motherfuckin' mind-spin: _Mah wanga be strong enough, boy. So you don' werry bout L'il Momma. And don' be askin' Miss Alice no more for what she cain't tell yew. Y'all'n hold tight…'member to hold strong._

Mama was out back now, the squeals and snorts of the hogs piercing the air with her jostlin' them back to the barn.

I didn't get no more of a chance to tell Rose to rid the place of the Snapes because one pissed off Dad stormed in, and his scope was set on me.

_Sh__itting hell._ I was in no mood to be wranglin' with the rankled Popo-never-to-be-a-Peepaw.

I let him barge me to the wall and slipknot me with his cuss, "Eddie, _boy!_ You better goddamn hope nothin', _I mean NOTHIN', _comes to hurt my little girl!"

I raised my eyes and they were more determined than they'd ever been, "I will kill myself before any harm comes to Bella… _Sir._

But not before I fucking obliterate _everything_ in our way."

He shook his hands out, and his expression was ravaged as mine. "You better hope so, Son. _You better hope so._"

Rose came up and took his arm, "Someone's been waitin' on you to show, Sheriff Swan."

Damn if he didn't gently take the bit in his mouth and allow himself to be led to the two-top at which the shaman Hill-Billy was tuckin' into a big plate of pulled pestilential… pork. "Pull up a seat," he motioned with his fisted fork.

The wolves walked circles around the perimeter of the smoke shack.

I tapped the Timex to make sure it was keepin' time.

Ten past two in the afternoon, Irina made her appearance.

"Eleazar gets along fine with one leg, thank you very much," was her intro to the group.

"I give a shit," I scathed.

"_Pussy peg leg_," Bubba coughed.

Garrett sidled up to Jizz, "She's spoken for, too?"

Bubba with his batman hearin' couldn't help rubbing in that he'd got the girl—who he was presently groping with his huge hands all over her ass— and bellowed, "Looks like you're SOL, man!"

"Mama Brown?" At the rate he was trying to hook up, I wondered if Garrett hadn't had a woman since the First Cuntinental Congress or some shit.

Rose spluttered and slapped Bub's hands away from their encroachment up the underside of her shirt where the bottom rounds of her tits were almost visible, "Gar!"

"What? I like a woman I can sink my teeth into," he winked, "and she'd be one cushy ride."

Mama strode into the room with a platter of more fleshy, malodorous meat that she set in front of the littlest wolf, Seth, like it was a trough. Her hands on her barrel-shaped hips, she sized the trailblazin' vampire up and down before she took a slim cheroot from her apron pocket, licked the tip and lit up with an amused, "Boy, I be pickin' my teeth with the likes of your hamhocks." She considered some more, "Sure be so good I'd like to put mah foot in it, but I be reserving' mahself for the comin' combat."

_Now that's exactly what I wanted to hear. Fuckin' A right. _

Charlie piped up from his pipin' hot plate of…green, slimy shit, usin' his knife like a pointer, "So. We're goin' after the Axis of Evil, huh?"

_Who the fuck did he think he was? George B. Senior?_ I frowned, "Yeah?"

Through a mouthful of food, he advised, "We just need to stay the course."

_And now it was Duh-bya, Jr.?_

"We ain't stayin' no course, and since when the hell did you become a Bush lover?" Me, I loved me some bush, but not them from the govern-mental First Family of fuck-ups… _Bella's bush_, to be precise, and if I didn't get her back soon, someone was gonna pay with a pound of flesh, for giving me no other option but to pound mah _own_ flesh instead of having Bella here to relieve my goddamn tension.

"What's gonna happen is this-" I lowered my voice, because although Mama had assured me her Vodun charms warded off the evil eye, Missus Snape was still hangin' about in the background, and who knew what side she was batting for since the Harry Potter universe didn't really exist. _Fuckin' wizards, yeah right._ 'Bout as likely as flesh-eatin' zombies. _Fictional fucknuts. _

Irina scolded, "Who the hell died and left you in charge, _Edward?_"

Bitch knew one sure way to get under my skin was to call me that! "Me. Eighty-nine years ago."

Respect was tempered by raised voices, sloshing beers, silverware clatterin', barking like the dogs had a sudden case of distemper.

Cuttin' through the commotion with a whistle, I called for some fuckin' order before Mama B's was razed to the ground by the bastards I'd brought together. Eventually, everyone returned to their corners and put their fuckin' listenin' ears on.

I was halfway through explainin' our tactics when Rose decided to get all bolshy and reactionary, "If that ain't a cockamamie scheme, I don't know what is."

"It'll work."

"The fuck it will, and don't be actin' like you're the only one who cares about Bella," Rose leaned against the wall, and her pain-riddled eyes matched her voice, "_I'd do anything for her._"

"We-ell, now, we think it's a real humdinger," a pair of newcomers supplied in unison.

Coulda knocked Alice over with a feather at the shocked expression carving up her face, while Bubba descended on the duo, "Took y'all this long to hitch up from Florida?" Apparently, he'd finally figgered out the Twitter, and sent out an SOS to all cunts across the country.

The taller of the two—the one with almost half his teeth—doffed his dusty BP Oil cap and slapped it into his dirty, stained dungarees, "We was-"

"Waylaid," the stouter brother finished, mixin' two fingers around in his mouth to tuck his wad of baccy further against his gum.

Stepping in front of Paul, Katrina hissed, "And _who,_ pray tell, are the undead?"

I looked from her to ragtag stragglers, "Nah, we met 'em on our trip down to Punta Gorda. 'S just JR and RJ."

"I can smell them from here," regally, Irina held an embroidered handkerchief up to her nose.

_That was just plain rude, bein' on the road for two weeks straight would make anyone stink._

I opened my mouth to berate her when JR/RJ said, "Actually, we's kinda… _dead_." I heard their thoughts, _There's some bad shit down there in the bayous of L'isiana._

RJ smashed another plug of tobacco into his cheek so he resembled a filthy, dirty, down-in-the-dumps, and apparently deceased, chipmunk, "_Undead_, Jerr."

"Oh, I don't _fucking_ believe this," I spat.

Alice was newly cheered by the news, "They'll never expect this!"

_No shit. I was a goddamn mind reader__, and I hadn't even considered this new set of circumstances._

Garrett almost went in to shake hands with the pair we'd played pool with in Punta before he thought better of it. "So, Zombies?"

They didn't look so bad, all things considered. They'd managed not to rot… _yet._

And now I had to control two fuckin' _zonbi._

Mama gasped and crossed herself when she passed through the swingin' saloon doors, "_Nzumbe!_"

RJ reversed held up his hands, "We ain't that bad, Ma'am!"

"Can you deal with them?" I appealed to Mama.

"Who be your _bokor_," she asked them about the witch doctor who'd doctored them up.

"Erzulie."

"She done sent us to you."

Mama grasped her pendulous _gris-gris_ charm.

"I'm hungry, brother," RJ prodded at his padded out cheek.

There was a collective gasp as everyone backed away from the Rot-tards.

JR punched his brother in the arm, and we held our breaths, waitin' for a chunk of putrid pulpy skin to fall away, "I love the way they get all a'scared when you say that."

"Ah knows it," RJ approached Seth, who slid off his stool like the slime was catchin', "mind if I join ya? I swears I just wanna a piece of," he bared his four remaining teeth that were razor sharp, "some of that there… _pulled pork._"

He grabbed the trencher and pretty much slid all the meat down his wide open gullet to a resoundin' relieved exhale.

"Ah, the frailty of life," Leah started out all philosophical-like, then quickly descended to suggestion, "don't it just make you wanna grab the bull by the… _horn_." She was staring at my cock.

Another round of roars and riled-up voices made a raucous din in the diner, brought on by the appearance of the Floridian Flesh Eaters. At this Christly rate, I'd have to produce a cunting pawedcast to get through the thick lu-_pus_ skulls… _how fucking hard was it?_ Wolves, element of surprise, _for fucking whore's sake!_

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I yelled.

On edge, even Jacob was vexed by the hexed duo. He got his snout right up in my face to insult, "Let's say we end this right now by me slashing the _tires_ on your house, hick vampire?"

I took him by the throat to hold him up like a hangman—his hefty weight nothin' more than pencil I could snap in two if I wanted to, "Watch it, Dogtooth**,** y'all are on the endangered species list for a reason, and I got no qualms about makin' you extinct."

"That a fact?"

I pulled him so close to my face his contemptuous expression was a blur, "Fuckin' right it is."

"ORDER!" Judge Jizz pounded on the bar. "I SAID ORDER!" The usually mellow marauder's voice detonated from within his chest.

Quiet enveloped us.

I dropped the Doberman.

"We adjourn to The Bluff," Jazz dipped his toothpick. "Regroup, reconnoiter, _campaign_ strategy-" _What the shit? Was he runnin' for office now?_

Leah yowled, "And M'Esme's famous bed and breakfast!"

_~~ll~~_

Things at Maw and Paw's weren't no better.

The beastly Bigfoots turned up in trucks and their tank, all sportin' SC Native decals… _yeah, they was natives alright._

They got out and spent some time sniffin' around each other's asses and shit, markin' each other's scent or somesuch.

Charleston County's Top Dog Mascot, they were not.

Bubba was whittlin' furiously, racin' our running-out time to complete his Kama Sutra collection: _The Rest of The Warrior_ would have to wait until after the feud.

Rose was pissed at me, as was C-Daddy, and I was purty sure I was gonna commit some atrocity or other before nightfall that'd have Maw tongue-lashing me with her inveterate, 'Go on out back, boy, and pick your own switch.'

The revenant revelers were playing horseshoes, and aside from my Bella missing, Maw was happy to have a houseful… such as they were: demons and other motherfuckin' anti-mother nature monsters.

The homestead was overrun.

The chasm in my chest at Bella's lingering absence was growin'.

Passin' through the second-story porch, I skimmed over Carl and Billy smokin' a bowl with Charlie pretending not to notice as he flipped Paw's porch television from MSNBC to Faux News.

Bellicose and gettin' damn near to belligerent, I left 'em to their peace pipe and politics and went to the only place I could find an ounce of peace… the upstairs 'powder room'.

Closing the door, I passed a hand over my face. Drummin' my fingers on the vanity, I shut my eyes but couldn't shut out the memories of the last time I'd been up here. _With Bella._ Screwing her. _Feelin' her._

Pavlov yanked on its chain and started tearin' through my jeans.

Her legs on either side of me.

Her smile beckonin' and brazen.

Her feet to the wall behind me as I lunged my throbbing cock up into her!

Tits in my face and hands and mouth; lickin', sucking, twisting…

_Loving._

_Fucking._

Her perfume of fresh rain and purity and pure sex washed over me.

Falling back to the door, I one-handed my button fly and eased my cock out.

_Ohhh, fuck._

Imagining her givin' it to me, I thought of her on her knees, her eyes coyly lifted up to mine just before she pursed her plush mouth directly over my swollen head, saturating me with her moist, fiery heat. Her hot, limpid tongue draggin' underneath the cliff of my dick where my most sensitive flesh felt every slash and suck.

I knuckled my fist under my balls with one hand, pulled up my erection with the other. Spitting into my palm, I rubbed it all over the cum that was collectin' and dripping from the small slit in the middle of my tip.

_Yess, fuck yes, Bella!_

Sensually, she'd drawn my cock lengthwise across her lips, _back and forth._

My hand remembered the motion.

My hips flexed, my knees buckled.

Then she'd suckled me into her mouth, against her inner cheek, _pushing-pushing-pushing_ until I'd cried out and pounded… _now_, I pounded! The wall, the basin, the floor with my feet!

Down into her throat, she'd swallowed against my head with her beautiful boobs cupped in her hands, my fingers claspin' her face… _gentle, slow._ "Slow down," I'd half-laughed and tried to pull out but her fingers had tightened their slick trail up and down my cock, and her lips had widened to take me all the way in.

_OH fuckin'…__ oh YES!_

"I'm gonna fuckin'," I'd gasped and panted, planted my feet wide apart, my voice cracking, _breaking_, "You're gonna make me cum!"

Her tongue had reached out, her smile glorious, her hair across her shoulders and drops of perspiration slippin' down her deep cleavage, "Cum, baby, cum in my mouth."

With that, she'd used only her lips to dip my erection from its tight, long standard against my abs back inside her.

Yelling out now, my hands flew up and down, rounding, pulling, fisting… I curled my fist and fucked through it hard until my 'nads constricted and my shaft engorged, and my head blew a stream of creamy cum across the bathroom, then another, and another…

_Fuck! Bella…_

Shaking, I gripped the sink.

_Fuck._

_Bella._

Beating off hadn't alleviated the bottomless bruise left by Bella. _Nope, not at all._ It only made the agony more acute, and my mood exponentially worse.

The Yippin' Yetis were helpin' themselves to the pantry _and_ my Kubota.

The JR's were enjoying a game of poker with Paw, Billy, Charlie, and a few other familiars: Seth, Jacob, and Paul.

Intrigued by the genetics of the big animals, the current bet on the table was that Carl would be able to take samples from them… I could only hope that shit didn't include substantiatin' their semen.

Katrina was having a chinwag with her sister Irina.

Rose was filing her nails into claws.

_I_ was this close to losin' my shit because no fucker was focusing on the fight at hand! At this rate I might as well… well, _fuck_. My fall back plan to anything was to fuck Bella, and since that sure as hell wasn't happening…

At the bottom of the stairs, I let loose, "ENOUGH!"

My voice doubled, it tripled… _it fuckin' sawed through the palm trees and sent a couple live oaks to _TIMBER! A geographic catastrophe hurricaned from my expletive until the soil rolled up, the flower beds became deep dents, the flora wilted and the fauna fled.

Night gelled around us… and suddenly attentive silence.

Broken by:

"_Edward Anthony Masen Cullen!"_

M'Esme clip-clopped down the steps to strong arm me and drag me back up with her.

"BOY! I am so mad at you right now, I just cain't even," _she couldn't make a full sentence, apparently._

"You just killed my plants!"

Mama Brown high-stepped out of the way as Maw peeled the skin off my ear with her fingernails, leading me into the kitchen, underneath the makeshift clothesline of used Ziplocs in her kitchen where she and Mama'd been cooking up a storm… _literally._

"He's a'hurtin' for her," Mama sought to intervene.

"I know he is." she cranked down on my other, previously unhurt, ear, "T'ain't no excuse for him to be cullin' my grounds!"

Before I could even speak up for myself, Maw scoffed, "Eddie, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out if it."

"Technically, that ain't so." I disagreed.

"You disagreein' with me about my ability to take you out, _Boy?_"

"No, Ma'am, I's just saying it was actually Paw who-"

_Crack!_

That thought was snuffed clean out of my head.

With ringing ears, I made way to the field where the Cage was set up. Bubba, _at least_, had been quite the motherfuckin' multi-tasker. With the chicken wire Sam had delivered from Goose Creek—seemed they had an endless supply of the chainlink-he'd constructed an eight foot tall decagon, on the belief that bigger-is-always-better-hell-yeah, and set it on the raised platform I'd quickly nailed together in the mornin'. We lined up giant halogen lanterns around the metal mesh arena and hit the generators to flood the area in a nuclear-like nightlite

Jizz had his Major mojo aura goin' on—_the mic helped_-lowering his Stetson over his left eye, "We gotta go in low and dirty, y'all. I'm talkin' hit 'em in the balls and nail their tits to the walls." An afterthought, he reminded us, "And don't y'all _ever _forget, they got more tricks up their sleeves than-"

I finished, "A dog has fleas!"

Bubba leaped up over the side and landed with a mighty _womp_. He beat his fists to his chests and raised his heavy-weight's arms up and down as he circled the arena, trying to work the group into a frenzy while JR slowly loped over and huffed and puffed himself over the top.

In his best Walter Cronkite does a Western voice, Jizz announced, "Let the games begin, _y'all!"_

Thirty seconds in and Bubba was begging on his knees, "FUCK! Get him away from me! He fucking licked me!" He whimpered pathetically, "I'm infected; someone get me the Germ-X!"

_Welcome to the Jungle _was amping across the barren pasture; on our pugilistic playlist.

Leah was a long and rangy gray wolf whose sleek fur lay as flat as her pointed ears to her head; an elegant animal, she was all pit bull when skirmishing.

Rose crouched low and growled as good as she got, taking the paw that backhanded her face with an ear shattering screech of metal on metal, and wrenching the rest of Leah's body up in the air like a flying fucking furball.

Their combined snarls were a disjointed melody, and their forms flashed so fast the human eye would never have been able to track their swirlin' motions—white flesh and blond hair, silvery fur and giant canines… a gnashing, crashing cataclysmic clash.

Their violent velocity ended with a sudden scream. Rose's face was mashed into the crisscrossed cage.

"And she's _ooooout,_" Jizz refereed.

"That ain't fucking fair! She grabbed my hair… _with her teeth_!"

Before she made beef jerky of Paul, the Kewpie Kelpie grinned widely at Jizz, clearly aware that behind her, Paul's fangs had elongated into a four-tiered trap hanging low from his curled back lips.

Using her precog abilities to unfair advantage, she _whirred_ on him with fleet feet in dense boots, bodily taking his russet, furry form to the mat.

"One. _Two._"

Paul wielded his claws at her face, but she grabbed a great hank of fuzz, fearlessly bringing herself right into the bite zone, "You're going so fucking far down, your asshole won't even know entry from exit." _Guess she'd know somethin' about that after mating with the EOFer._

As if the mammoth-sized man-mutt weighed no more than one of her knocked-off handbags, she lifted him up over her head and cracked him across her knee before standing victoriously to scared cheers; Paul crawled over and dropped out to the ground.

Right before he shifted, Jacob sheepishly shuffled his feet and blushed in front of Maw, "It ain't in my nature to hurt a lady, Ma'am."

"Then we got no problems, because I'm gonna mop mah floor with your hairy ass," Maw assured him with a very genteel smile.

As they started goin' at it, it was all I could do not to intervene, especially when Jacob slunk across the staging to rear up on his hindlegs before pinnin' Maw to the ground with his slobber staining her favorite pinafore.

Paw held me back, "Easy, son. Esme can take care of herself."

Needless to say, once she distracted him by whisperin' in his ear, she rolled him over, raced up the side of the cage and body slammed him while he was still prone, leavin' him a shivering, salivating mass.

"What'd you say to him?" Rose asked afterwards.

"Went for his weakness, promised him a nice, big, juicy steak later, and as soon as I started talkin' about food, he was nothin' but a puppy in my hands," she walked over to pat his rump.

Jizz looked more like he was performin' Tai Cheech and Chong, a mini-bong clamped down between his teeth, with Sasquatch Sam circling and circling him. Unable to get any purchase on the smooth sucker, Sam was but a dog chasin' his tail until Jizz took to the air in a flying somersault that had him riding the big, bad wolf bareback.

Inside the ring, the Boston Bedouin jeered at Paw with, "Got any last words of wisdom, Founding Father?" Garrett's brawn and Paw's brains had them well matched, and eventually it was called a draw.

That left me to take on the sisters Denali… _not like I hadn't done that before._ Bubba rubbed my shoulders and gave me some instructions for destruction before sendin' me in against the succubus squared.

If they thought they were gonna tag-team me with their charms this time, they were dead wrong.

_No woman but Bella __would ever catch my eye again._

I clotheslined Irina, headlocked Katrina, whippin' my head back and forth away from their scratching nails.

A knee to my groin hobbled me, the paroxysms of pain all but blinding me.

"And always _your_ weakness, Eddie," Katrina taunted.

Irina added, "Your _cock._"

"Y'all never called it a weakness when you were gettin' it," I spat, regaining my footing.

Rage and emptiness and an enormous hit of adrenaline made me tornadic. I quickly grabbed one of each of their arms, spiraling them in opposite directions, round and round until I slammed them headlong into each other with another concussive _BOOM! _ that flattened one more section of forest.

"Sorry, Maw," I apologized, jumpin' out of the cage.

"That's okay. Least you had a good reason for it this time," she sneered at the Alaskan Liliths still flapping 'round the ring.

The stakes were high, but I hoped the odds might just be evened out if we could let go of our antagonism long enough to unite.

Mama Brown unshelved her arms from their restin' place across her jugs and nodded at me, having read my thoughts. Calling for a congregation, she opened those arms wide, and her voice was a powerful, majestic command, "Now y'all done proved you can fight, and it's time to come tagether."

Gullah and Cajun, Haitian and voodoo, loup-garu, loogaroo all presided together in a filial ring as Mama deeply intoned her prayer:

_Our Fadduh awt'n Hebb'n,  
all-duh-weh be dy holy 'n uh rightschus name.  
Dy kingdom com.'  
Oh lawd leh yo' holy 'n rightschus woud be done,  
on dis ert' as-'e tis dun een yo' grayt Hebb'n.  
'N ghee we oh Lawd dis day our day-ly bread.  
"N f'gib we oh Lawd our trus-passes,  
as we also f'gib doohs who com' sin 'n truspass uhghens us.  
'N need-us-snot oh konkuhrin'  
King een tuh no moh ting like uh sin 'n eeb'l._

With her sagacity, we went from adversarial… _to allies._

"Fuh dyne oh dyne is duh kingdom, 'n duh kingdom prommus fuh be we ebbuh las'n glory. Amen."

"Amen."

"Right on."

"Tell it, Mama!"

"I'm ready to make some ally-gawtor stew out of them godforsaken Vultures!"

Jizz lifted his head from a long and silent prayer for his soul and those of our new confederates, his somber appearance hastenin' to one of mischief. He patted around the pockets of his flannel, "Shee-it, y'all, I seem to have lost my stash."

* * *

~You know it. The Battle is next, Y'all think you're ready for Eddie and Rebella to be reunited? Lemme know…really, _please_, go and review! Send Eddie your fight song ;)~

**Chapter notes:**

The Snapes are from the first chapter, New South

JR/RJ…y'all remember them from Monster Truck Ball?

"_Like to put my foot in it": _Gullah saying for, "Tastes so damn good!"

Gullah Prayer: Our Fadduh / Our Father / Pater Noster

www . marysrosaries . com / collaboration/index . php?title=Gullah_Rosary_Prayers

**BLOGS****, where you can catch the teasers, the artwork, songs, vids, and any sextras:**

http:/ deadconfeds . wordpress . com /

http:/ rebelward . wordpress . com /

**Brags:**

Gotta give enormous thanks to both Lindz and MsEm…they make the chapter and teaser art for the DC blog, and they fucking rock it!

Check out Lindz's (affectionately known by Eddie as Luscious) other work at **Robmaniporn **(trust me, it is what it says it is ;)):

http:/ robmaniporn . blogspot . com/

MsEm has just started her first fanction, _The Journal_! fanfiction . net/s/6889509/1/The_Journal

I have two more recs this time (both are on my faves list):

_Twinned_ by Conversed. I cannot even begin to explain the way Conversed's writing gives me chills. She's a fucking genius. Read it.

_A Handsome Woman_ by Viola Cornuta and winterstale. It's a fantastic, historical tale set from the far reaches of Ireland to the frontier of Texas, and it is stunning.

Cheers, Rie~


	35. Love is a Battlefield

Super-sized thanks to my gorgeously talented betas: Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta! It's a lot of fun watching them whip Eddie and Co. into shape…they don't take any of his guff ;).

Disclaimer: I own the Cackalakee Cullens, some hubcap art, a lot of really dirty thoughts ;). Alas, Twilight and all its stuff belongs to Miss Meyer, and many thanks to her for letting us mess with her story and characters.

Special loves and thanks to the following: QuantumFixxz and BellaFlan for some pre-reads and letting me sweat-it-out with them. To Amanda, GK, ilive2read, EdwardsBrunette2 (btw you, I can't get back to you on reviews anymore because of a new feature and your PM is disabled), and someone else (I'm sorry, I forgot!) for sending in their awesome fight songs! Of course, ridiculous amounts of inappropriate PDA's to dedicated readers, reviewers, art & vid makers; y'all know who you are and I adore you immensely!

A couple reasons this update is later than usual. The good: wrote a rough draft first book for a supernatch series; excited! The bad: there was a fairly serious medical episode in my immediate family, but everything is on the up-and-up regarding that. A lot of thanks for the kind support from everyone on FB when I needed it .

~~This is NSFW, ladies. You fuckin' betcha!~~

Thanks Miss Rena for the song suggest!

**Song:**

_No Matter What, _Papa Roach

youtube . com/watch?v=kawIXYg8uMo

* * *

**Love is a Battlefield**

D-fuckin' Day.

Now, that D coulda stood for a number of things, and I had me a fair few ideas what they might be. Death to Demetri, Down with the Doges, Doomsday, Deliverance.

_Yeah, Deliverance._

We had an appointment to keep, and death to reap.

Us Cullens, Mama B, Rose and Frankenstein's Bride—Mary _Alice _Shelley-the palindrome zombies x 2**,** Garrett, Alpha Lady and the Tramps, and the Denali sisters…

After the ultimate cage fightin' and Mama's Gullah love-in, we'd prepped, schlepped weaponry, whittled down the whitetail deer pop. The dogs made a decent dent in M'Esme's pantry. Mostly turnin' a blind eye to Garrett's gluttonous ways, I gave him a few names of SOBs—South of Broads—I wouldn't have minded bein' deleted from the population census.

I swear to fuck I didn't mope or mouth off… _much_.

In the bog, I was gettin' spiffed and spruced and _Brute_ 45'd. Well, I had me some clean jeans—well-worn and faded, they rode low on my hips—and a black t shirt. I'd eschewed the redneck pit and prick rinse for a shower. Even though my cock trained up huge and hard, I'd barely brushed my knuckles over my glans and nuts… _man, I was savin' it all up for Bella now._

Per usual, my hair was a hot mess. _Whatever._ Bella dug it.

In the fogged-up medicine cabinet mirror, I spoke to myself, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen-"

The tropical swamp met cooler A/C when the door banged back.

Bubba shoved me aside to Speedstick his pits, "What the fuck you doin', dude?"

I did up my fly and lashed my belt. "Practicin' my speech."

"I think I can pull the orig up on my Kindle, _for free_."

"_I_ think I can pull your entrails out your orifice." I slammed Emmett into the ugly aqua tile, with a _brotherly_ smile.

Bonnie butted in with her Clyde, aka Jizz, her haunting face appearing through the steam, "It's time."

Right then, I slowed down. The heat and haze grabbed onto me, the thought of Bella comin' to me as a Volturi deadened my heart. Yanking my t-shirt in place, I patted my chest and wished… _I just wished._

Nah, screw this wishing bullshit. I _wanted_, right fuckin' now.

_Now_ I knew what Con Artist Alice was all about. _Damn straight._ She'd save Jizz no matter the cost—he was her people. In this mindset, we were the same. All her accosting of me, all her pushing and prodding and bitching and whining was… _for this day._

She'd friggin' known I'd get it.

Exiting the bathroom, I winked at Alice, back-slapped Jazz, and tugged Bubba out after me.

I looked over the 'parlor' one last time and straightened Bella's pencils and notes on the coffee table.

Wiping off a scudmark, I spit-shined the _winder_ and creased the duct tape back into the screen to keep the skeeters out.

I was sayin' bye to this place, this life.

I might-could, I probably _would_ die. But my family was foremost. And Bella? She was front and center.

Jizz offered me a ride up Route 41 in his classic black Ford with a cool glimpse, "You okay, man?"

I patted the steering wheel of my Bronco then started her up. "Yeah. I'm all fuckin' Zen. Cain't you tell?"

_~Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Weak~_

And several weeks without Bella made me fractious.

The median blurred past, and the cicadas went splat.

Dawn did its thing, rising blindingly. I grabbed for my camo visor and a beer.

It took all of five minutes to make the monastery.

In the lead, I cruised into the parking lot outside the sandstone sanctuary, put her in park, and leapt up between urns and palms and cruciforms, crushing crunchy crickets with each step.

On this August day, all was stagnant, breathless, fetid… futile.

Heavy air panted down my neck in perspirin' waves, sultry with foreboding.

I was in the middle of considerin' a splash and dash with the patched-up fountain's holy waters, or tommy-knocking on the sanctuary's fortress doors just to see what God would do, when a minivan of cloaked clergymen pulled up.

The Friars departed their Dodge Caravan-cum-clown car.

Robust and rotund and flush-faced… one, two, three, and four, then—_I swear to fuck_—another five more.

The men-in-black-cassocks didn't _quite _welcome me and mine, this time.

Sideswiping us, they made for the abbey with all due haste and shiny bald pates.

"Hold up!" I called.

Skittishly, they stopped. Their skirting fanned out around their feet and covered every available inch of slate paving stones.

Clearly apprehensive of all us paranormals _plus_ zombies, the Brothers bowed hesitantly, their snoods dippin' and their rosaries clinkin' off roughly woven belts.

Maw snuck up behind me, slapping the cap off my head. "Show some respect, boy."

Duly told off, I squinted at them through the sun and shot the shit with 'em for a bit. Motioning to the revamped piazza, I congratulated, "See you got some craftsmen worth their salt."

They nodded en masse and seemed to be muttering some prayers, all the while avoiding looking at my colossal crew.

Now, I'd already given them a pile of greenbacks for my earlier sins, but that didn't matter one bit.

Today was another fuckin' story of the Revelations kind. And I weren't gonna leave them holdin' the bag for our collateral damage, was I?

Reachin' into my back pocket, I pulled out a crumpled check. "For future… _um… _breakages, and shit," I explained. Signed with my John 'Cock and blank, it was held between the pudgy fingers of the eremite in charge.

"Y'all are pretty quiet, know that?" I shuffled from foot to foot and gnawed on my lip.

A pipsqueak piped up timorously, "Vow of silence."

I rolled my eyes, "Right. Yeah. 'Course." Placing my visor back on my head, I fingered the crease the way I liked it. I made to fist bump the hermit who'd spoken up. Barely tapping his knuckles, I went easy on the geezer, but still he winced. "In God we trust, y'all."

Bubba coughed, _"Liar, liar, vampire on fire._"

Thinkin' themselves dismissed, they began to make their leave. My last shout out halted them, "So, we'll just be over yonder, in the field, killin' some _really _bad guys. Y'all might wanna batten down the hatches, okay?"

That sent them from a sedate march to a full-on scamper.

Poor fuckin' sods.

Yeah, Mepkin Abbey was like Disney World: somethin' for everyone. 'Course the Five-Fingered Finkstress wanted to check out the rustic gift shop for a little pregame shoplifting. I figgered they could add her tally to my cashier's check, so what the fuck, right?

They had the homegrown 'shrooms for Alice, Pils-not-pills for me and Bubba-and that was some high octane, quality brew; no Blue Nun BS here—and, lo and behold, friggin' fruitcake for Jizz… the fruit. Unfortunately, those crapcakes were only sold online at Williams-Sonoma.

Winona-Robber-Ryder's tote was bulging with souvenirs before our salvation, and I was salivatin' for a battle royale.

"Let's head."

The pale armature of the priests' palatial abode embraced the meadow.

Buzzards sat high up on the limbs of southern pines, punitive black harbingers of things to come. Their wings spread and their beaks sharp, waiting for waste and carnage.

_Scavengers._

With Scabby-Dudes one and two and the Scoobies concealed in the forest at our back, the sun at our front, we stood in makeshift order until the hot disc reached its zenith.

Banners appeared on the horizon, swiftly floating closer. I peered through the satiny sashes, searching.

Their numbers outdid ours as they spread out in a long line of lethality, closing in.

The high standards flailed like hangmen in the sirocco. With fifty yards between our factions, the Volturi's red carpet appearance was interrupted by a group of feasting turkey vultures swoopin' down on the carrion of a spoiling coon carcass; their vamp-in charge stiffened in annoyance.

In a muted blend of brown and black and gray, the Eye-talians hazed to within twenty feet of us.

I was at the apex, this was my fuckin' time.

Arsehole, likewise.

The _arrivo_ _di ragazzi-glitterati_ made my teeth cut into my cheeks and my shoulders bunch with muscle.

Cocking my head, I smirked at Aro the _scarafaggio_.

I couldn't look at Bella, not yet.

Their ranks were… _rank._ Headed by Aro with Marcus and Caius at his sides, the ladies—term, used loosely—Chelsea and Head Huntress Heidi flanked. Then came Jane-Pain and Smart-Alec bookended by Poncho Villain and Scarface Demetri.

From there, they were nameless, faceless, hooded nonentities who would know a fire pyre before the day was through. _I could fuckin' guaran-damn-tee that._

Unfamiliar fingers linked with mine, twistin' my thoughts into an eddying current made of Alice's voice and visions.

_Bella is the culmination of everything._

I lifted my mica eyes to finally see Bella.

_Eddie._ Alice wormed away at me.

"_Mmm."_My body wracked to reach Bella.

_Her cloak…__ it's red._

A crushing weight ripped into my chest, rippled down my stomach, filled me with a fury that made my nostrils flare and my eyes wild.

"_She's royalty,"_ I thought, jerkin' my hand from Alice. _The edict had been true. _

Underneath the stoicism of her expression, Bella's hummingbird heartbeat echoed towards me. Aro licked his skinny lips and tightened his rein on her.

For the first fuckin' time I saw red. And it wasn't a color.

It was RAGE!

Arranged on Albino Aro's arm… _I was gonna cut through those tendons with my teeth, curdle his guts with my fingers, feast on his liver and spit it out into his face._

Instead of all that, I stepped up to plate. I didn't give Aro my hand, only a sneer and a dare, "You ready for the Cold War, Cunt?"

A slimy salamander, the Hell Bender slithered to the right, "Carlisle-"

I stepped in front of Paw. "You don't talk to him. You speak to me."

Lizardace Caius fanned himself, thinkin' some disgusting Dom/sub scene starring yours goddamn truly, with a stock whip.

Eerily shifting his glance aside, Aro next approached Irina, whose hard shell exterior was shellacked like every strand of her bobbed, brilliant white-blond hair. "Rina," he called on her, familiarly.

I snapped my fingers in front of his leucistic face that was becoming mottled with anger**.** "Read my lips. Y'all need to focus _right_ _here_." Obviously, my injunction to 'read my lips' jump-started another nauseating fantasy in Caius's mind. _Jesus Fuck._

Simpering, Aro inclined his head, "My how you've grown, _Eddie._" His expression defined by joyful depravity, he trolled his long, thin skeletal fingers over Bella's forearm. Her face remained blank. My gut dropped, and a jolt of vile hatred hit me like a Mack truck. "Unfortunately, not enough to keep your lover happy, it appears."

Made concrete by the intense desire to hack him to pieces, I clenched my jaw, bared my teeth. A low growl ripped from my chest.

"Found your Achilles' Heel, did I?" He _tsked_, curving his papery arm around the Greater Siren's serpentine waist. She didn't blanch. "Don't worry, Eddie, I've been seeing to her _personally._" His smeary lips loosened into a galling smile.

Right about then my fuckin' 'happy place' included seeing Aro with his mouth stuffed full of all ten of his fingers and his legs twisted backwards on their joints, with him still alive and writhing in misery… _seein' him personally to a masterful, mangled suffering._

Every one of my allies had backed off from us. The huge scruff-stemmed field diminished to this match of willpower between me and Aro, with Bella the centerpiece, the thing fought for, _sought after._

"You could just come with us," he coyly blinked his colorless eyelashes as though he was tryin' to enchant me. "End this all before any of your comrades get hurt. Of course, I'd _have_ to keep Isabella in my _apartements_, we've grown so very fond of each other."

"I don't know about y'all, but me and mine? We love a good fight." Towering over Aro's shrunken form, I felt the ripples of his power that came from his imprecatory being. The closer I got, the more feelers I felt threaded from him; crawly fingers testing and reaching and lookin' for a way into my brain.

"I'd need the lovely, larcenous Alice, too. Without question," Asinine Aro tacked on.

"I'm thinkin'… _Fuck You._"

"So, we fight."

"Fuckin' right, we do."

Aro attempted to pull one over on me; he just wanted _one look_ inside my head. "Shake on it?"

I grabbed my crotch, "Shake this."

Caius damn near fainted and all but sent his hand to the air to volunteer. _Queer._

Pissed off that I wouldn't be goaded into apotheosizing, Arsehole sneered so hard I feared his brittle face would up and crack like an arid creek bed. "_This_ is your army?" His bleary, pond-scum eyes stretched over my own soldiers.

"You're one to talk," I meanly inspected Scrawny Arnie's look-alike minions. "I mean, y'all are wearin' goddamn bathrobes."

"Just _robes_."

"Whatever."

The troops were gettin' rambunctious; Alice was whinnying at Jizz, Maw was clutchin' her pearls, I could hear the Rin Tin Tin's pawin' the glades and the two Sloppy Joes letting drop various of their own body parts.

Bubba was about to begin his bellyachin', but I had one more thing I needed to say. Rose stood staunch and tall; she kept her eyes off Bella and herself formidably in front of Mama like a Gorgon.

Crackin' my neck, stretching my shoulders back, I commanded this motherfuckin' place. "Fiends, Romans-"

The male of the midget twins interrupted me, "Technically, we're not Romans."

"Oh, you wanna die right now?"

"No, Sir."

"That's better." I continued, "Cuntrymen." Behind me, the troops coalesced. "Lend me your ears."

Fishing around, one of the flesh-meltin' Manwiches came up putrefying trumps and shouted, "Got one!"

_Bang went the JR's cover. _

I didn't need no _Nieuw_ Van Gogh in the mix.

Nor Bubba's critique, "You changed it."

"Did some tweakin'."

"You have mummies?" Aro asked about our resident evil brothers.

Maw took offense, bein' our _mum._

_The fuck was goin' on here?_

I closed my eyes, made fists of my hands, then opened them to Bella. "I've come to bury _Caius_," the vamp in question grabbed his hem and skittered backwards. "Not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after 'em, _and I should know_."

"Preach it, Eddie." Mama rocked back and forth, holy-rollin' over this.

My face raised, my eyes pinpointed to Aro, to Caius, to the inured Vulcan, Marcus. I coulda' been one of them. I'd always be a bastard, but not like this. "Thou art fuckin' fled to brutish beasts." _If only they knew._ "Men have lost their reason." I called upon Bella, her arch eyes, her lithe legs, her… _human heart that had loved me, unreasonably._ Clear and gold, her irises lingered on mine, _finally_. She would at least know this goddamned truth.

"My heart is in the coffin, _there_." I rubbed my chest. "And I must pause 'til it comes back to me."

Disgustedly, Aro scoffed, "Globe theatre, Eddie? Shakespeare, you are not."

Marcus mumbled like an Alzheimer's patient, "The course of true love never did run smooth."

Glaring at him, Aro looped his tissue paper fingers far too fuckin' close to Bella's _globes_ for my comfort. "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."

_Fuckin' Hamlet._

His play piece over, he called Bella to him, "Come, my dear."

Imperiously ignoring me, he glided back to his combatants.

With his back turned, Bella cautiously mouthed, "_I love you, Eddie Cullen._"

Outwardly, I couldn't react, and remained as immobile as if Alec had anaesthetized me. But inside, I fuckin' rejoiced!

Placin' my hands over my vacant heart, I nodded.

She shook her head at me, her mouth turned down, plainly sayin', _"Don't do anything stupid._"

I raised an eyebrow at her in response.

I'd seen too much and lived for a friggin' ridiculously long time. Hardened to my existence and dead inside, I'd been incapable of _love._ Man, that word still hit me like an arrow right where it hurt when I looked at Bella. Reborn with her, I knew I'd been a lucky bastard. I'd had every cuntin' thing I'd never even imagined.

_If I was gonna die so she lived on, so fuckin' be it. _

"Don't," Bella beseeched quietly.

I held my fingertips to my lips to hush her, to gently send a kiss to her one last time.

At his army, Aro grandstanded while Bella took her place as arm-candy. Deeper of voice, drunk on his power, he bellowed, "Come to me. _For I am the Apocalypse._"

The onslaught started.

At his rear quarter, lines formed and multiplied. From behind every _bad habit_ more draped figures appeared.

While they kept to ancient battle formation, we ruptured apart.

Me at the forefront, I sped to Aro, growling, clawing, _crazing_. "And I'm your favorite worst nightmare. So bring it." I craned back, then headbutted him right off the bat. Venom spewed like Old Fuckin' Faithful from the great big gusher of his nose.

_Damn, that felt good._

All hell broke loose!

From the plain into a swampy glade, vampires tore and punched, kicked and defiled one another. Jade green palms and untouched loam were all decked out in sprays of sizzling venom.

Roosters hopped to their free-range nests.

And Bella broke from her ranks too soon.

Her shield, that thing that fuckin' shut me out, was no longer plainly defensive.

She fenced with her arms like sabers and her teeth like daggers, her aura keeping her safe.

Aro blinked rapidly, "Isabella?"

"You want some of this, Skankhole?" Bella wrapped a vine around her arm and whipped its thorny barbs at Aro.

Unbelievably, she sent him to Kingdom Come, with nothin' but her mind.

The cypress tree froze when Aro _bammed_ into it. Its long, feathery limbs frosted over, and its gnarly knuckles shackled him in a tomb of timber.

_Neat shit. _

Until the Iceman cometh forth from his coffin with an enraged roar!

Riddling through the glens, we wrestled back to the field. Numbers decreased with bodies deceased.

A flood of cack-colored Cistercians were roundin' up their flocks, spiriting them to the chicken coops.

While Jane lasered in with her screaming spot-on pain, we shunted, lunged, and tore apart.

Damn right, us Cullens and Co. preferred good old fashioned hand-to-hand.

I gave a good, swift kick up the ass to some guardsman or other.

Suddenly MoonPie-Face Jane narrowed her eyes at Alice, "You… _you!_" She spluttered.

_Of all the unholiest friggin' things._

Alice had stripped Jane of her debilitating powers like little more than five-finger discounting a pair of sunglasses and crammin' them into her hobo bag.

Patting her hold-all, pulling down on her short, sharp, raven's hair, Alice grinned, "That's right, Eddie, I can kife powers, too." Her nose wrinkled. "Just not yours; you're _special_."

_Whatever. _The way she said it made it sound like I was ridin' the short bus to school. Not that I'd ever go back to Wando HS, but c'mon, _gimme some credit. _

Parallel to me, Katrina electrified a Volturi into a smokin' corpse.

_Yes._

When another wave of wankers sped towards us, I gave the word to Jizzper.

Calamity met Cujo when he purled out a… _wolf whistle._

The pounding stampede of spiny-backed, broad canine steeds was awesome!

And the look on Aristo-gnat's face almost made this entire shitstorm worth it.

Flying forward, I spun and delved my hands into more and more anon Vultures. Knifing into glassy skin, through viscera and out the other side, gelatinous masses like Jell-O molds plopped like lead weights from my fingertips.

Everywhere, _everywhere_, punches clashed and knees smashed, _BOOMS_ shattered the ground! Bodies gouged craters and venom made fermenting streams.

I lived for this.

I kept my eye on Bella, at all fuckin' times.

_I lived for her_.

Bubba brushed past me with a high five, "Fuckin' A!"

Fluff was snowin', fur was flying! Feathers molting and wings flappin'. It was a goddamned menagerie. JR/RJ weren't lookin' so hot, in the fray of things. Good thing, too, because a couple cloaked cunts stepped back from their newly-severed pieces, aware of the contagion.

Maw was fast at makin' hash and mincemeat of the _bestiame_**; **she and Carl were back-to-back as they cut through the dominions.

Slobbery wolves and snappin' sackcloth and unfried chick'n dinners made Jacob clash his long, lethal 'nines. _"There's a lot of hens here!_"

Aro's head whipped around, he intercepted the ideas floating between me and the Interlopin' Spirit Dogs. "You understand them?"

"Yeah." I smirked. "Sucks to be you, don't it?"

Our little intermission ended with a renewed melee of mixed-up, messed-up monks; friars and fowl flapping amidst the fray.

_Fuck. I needed this?_ Rising up on the balls of my feet, I yelled, "Don't kill the Brothers!"

JR/RJ looked all pleased and shit like I was out to protect their rotten asses. "Not _you_. Y'all are already dead, right?" I huffed irritably. "I meant the Monks."

Through the maelstrom of hooded tunics, I knew Bella was dead-on in red, but it was all gray to me. A moving target, she weaved in and out, no longer frail—not that she'd _ever_ been that—but still sorta mortal with her heart continuing to beat.

Her skin luminous and her hair like Medusa's, I couldn't keep my eyes off her while she kicked some motherfucking ass. Her stilettos slicing, her fingers dicing, her luscious mouth absolutely gaddamn kissable.

_I wanted my hands on her._

Mama stayed close to her. I heard their exchange, _"L'il Momma, your man be all made up to pitch a fit and fall in it whiles you were gone."_

A veil of whispers surrounded the two: the Gullah Queen Negress, the Vampire Empress. A force field no one could penetrate.

Bubba dutch-ovened under a Volturi's gardette's gown, then popped the bitch's knees apart before repeating his move on her elbows, spine… neck.

Maw swung a hefty hemp-wearing heifer towards RJ, and those two Floridians made some sour mash outta her while Maw whispered an aside to me, "Them Vultures is givin' me the stink eye. Might-could be they're just squinty bastards, not used to the sun and all. Shoulda' worn their _dark glasses_."

Acres across the field, Rose was preppin' for a bitch fight with Heidi by stepping out of her heels and takin' her earrings off.

I didn't know which Diva to root for—Blondie or Brunette-in the powdery pastures until Rose took Heidi in a WWE Stepover Toehold Facelock. I was chanting, "Off with her head, off with her head, off with her… _wig_?" _What the fuck?_

With a renting sound and a rift that musta hurt—judging by Heidi's shriek—Rose looked from Skinheidi to the ratty locks in her hands. Vainly, Sinead O'Condor scurried to cover her baldness. "What? It's fine you're all aberrations, but I'm the freak?" As a group, we continued to watch her like some sideshow attraction. "Fine," Heidi huffed, "I suffer from female-pattern baldness from an excess of testosterone in my system." She glared at Aro.

I glanced at M'Esme, but she was no help. She had a far-away look in her eyes, wondering if Heidi's un-do would work as a mop-head. We turned to the resident doc; Carl just shrugged.

Shit, she was like… _one of us_.

So it was, it had come down to a clusterfuck of dickless wonders and the last key pawns: Eleazar, Demetri, Caius, Aro, Marcus, Chelsea… _Jane and Alec._

Aro gained power with the spiraling speed of a tempest. His gown billowed, he grew taller, and the wrath suffusin' his face made it look like he was about to pop his clogs. He was headed for Carl.

Simultaneously, Bubba distracted Alec with a loud groan, "_Ow!_ Shit man, I've got a Charlie horse!"

Invaded by the groping tentacles of Alec's mind-numbing Novocain, Bubba went into a freaky trance that consumed Alec's attention, leaving him open to an attack. Jizz jumped through the air, soaring on a thermal to land on top of Alec. Hands first, his knuckles like shards of glass, Jazz spun his fingers into screeching metallic flesh, lifting out lumps of tissue that congealed into hardened crystals.

A cataclysmic _crunch_ made Alec disjoint to the ground with his skull disengaged from the rest of his body. Mangled blue veins weeped toxic sputum onto the soil. His mouth gaped, and his eyes morphed from red to black to gold… _to dead._

Carl flicked his stogie on top of the heaped body for instant conflagration.

Insane Jane went ballistic, like she needed an excuse.

_And every-fuckin'-thing_ _stopped._

Across the field, Mama Brown stood stock still inside a cloudy shroud of dust.

A centrifugal storm ingested her, vampires butting into her _wudu_ armor, breakin' down her resistance. Her brown eyed delved to mine - earthen, _knowing._

"NO!" I yelled.

My mind on Mama, I was stabbed almost effortlessly, a painless gash serratin' across my chest. Globs of poison welled out of the wound that was parting beneath Jane's jerking teeth.

She could have just slashed me neatly with a straight cut.

Instead she chose to inscribe my skin with vile tears and rips.

Alice and Rose ran to Mama, Leah pounded sod to get to them.

After a summer with little rain, the field became a dustbowl under trouncing paws and hammering feet, and a sandstorm sluiced up to cover Mama and the others in a blinding dirt rain.

It felt like goddamn hours before the brown ash settled, and one-by-one, their bodies reappeared… the mask of death already descended over Mama Brown.

The strapping hulk of a guardsman who'd taken Mama down was skilled, precise in his retaliation, but he was no match for Rose's mercenary rage. Torn apart by her, he ended his life yelping like a puppy.

My wounds glutted with streams of venom.

Jane sinisterly watched me fall to my knees. She didn't need her sleight of mind to take me down this time. Just centuries of vampire bootcamp, of the badass variety.

I rolled to my back when she kicked me.

"One More Break, _Eddie._"

I dared her, "Take my head, you sorry excuse for a succubus… you could never have me."

"I don't need you to get on board with what I'm about to do." She blinked her unreal eyes.

With my skin hanging in swags, silvery saliva swamping my tongue, I pushed my fist to the ground and got to my feet one last time. Plea bargaining, I said, "You won't harm Bella."

"We can't. _Aro_ won't _allow_ it." Jane nastily sing-songed.

"She's _mine_ not his!"

"Does it really matter now?" She pushed her hand down on my shoulder so my legs bent under her weight. "You want her to live."

_Yeah, no matter the cost. _"Do it then." I demanded.

"I look forward to putting your head on the spike." Jane lifted her fist, her fingers spread like the glinting tines of pitchforks, only she never brought it down.

Choking through sloshy breaths, I looked up.

Pimped-out with his gold chains, Demetri held her wrist.

Hobblin' on one leg and a stump, Eleazar grabbed her hair.

Behind them all, Bella rushed up. "She's mine, boys."

They stepped aside.

Bella narrowly shook her head at me with a tumult of glossy waves, possibly disappointed I'd gotten myself into this fuckin' predicament. Her eyes grew impossibly brighter with the wash of tears she wouldn't let fall. Then her resolve visibly hardened, Jane in her sights.

"You are one nasty piece of work, Jane," Bella circled her quarry like an avenging angel, and fuck if she wasn't smokin' hot. Jane couldn't get a lick in, on account of Bella's shield, but even if she had that option…_Alice stood to the side sniggerin' and patting her pick-pocketbook._

Leah ditched her furry form and careened to us. "You need a hand gutting this bitch?"

"Nah, I got it."

"I'll just look after Eddie, then." She hunched down beside me, staunching the flow of colloidal silver from my injuries, shakin' her head. "How you got in this mess, Eddie! You ain't supposed to be looking like this. Fine, _fine_ man, where's my salute?" Leah focused straight at my crotch. As always, my cock wanted to do the proper thing, oblivious to the bullshit brewin' around us. My erection strained with Bella's closeness, and Leah's hand hovered a bit too close, like she really was gonna give it a good shake. At my glower, she grinned unapologetically, "What? You were offerin' earlier."

Bella was suddenly in action. She didn't use her speed or her shield or any of the myriad talents that made her sexier then ever before; she didn't cheat with her vengeance. Nothin' fragile about her, she was just hardcore woman on a mission. Thrashing pointlessly, Jane's cries reverberated and Bella's teeth skated a deep line from shoulder to shoulder across her collar bone. The sound of glass on steel sent chills up my back.

"Say buh bye, Jane." Bella wrenched the entire upper half of her torso clean off.

The instant Jane's head rolled, Bella was next to me.

I thought she was gonna smack me some good.

Instead, she gashed her own wrist, letting the LTC flow. "Drink."

My voice hoarse, I turned away, "No."

"Jesus Christ, don't get a martyr complex now! Drink from me!"

Paw stooped down. _Her heart is her weakness, her blood is your strength. Take her, Son._

I let the smallest sips into my mouth from her opened vein. _It melted to my tongue._

Gathering my teeth away from her skin, I latched tighter, Bella's hand pressing me closer, "Yes!"

It was worse this time… and better.

She tasted delicious, but her feelings crossed into me.

She didn't fuckin' worry I wouldn't stop, she was only concerned I got enough.

I broke away, "Bella!"

Reinvigorated, my body glued itself back together. I snuck a kiss to her wrist, closed her flesh, and laved it with my tongue.

The Chupacabra Chick butted in, "_Mmm hmm__**, **_big boy, lap it up, that's right. Knew you'd learn somethin' from us wolves. _The things I bet you can do with your tongue, hon._"

Ignoring her , Bella rocked me in her lap, "Don't you ever let that happen again."

I brushed my thumb across her pouty bottom lip. "I'll try real hard not to." I sat up and kissed her hungrily. "By the way, you still taste really fuckin' good."

_~Weather Forecast: God reigns supreme, and The Son always shines~_

Aro's shadow fell over us forebodingly. He was exactly the type of weasel to kick a fucker when he was down.

"Deliver me my scepter, Caius."

I stood, scowlin' into his cowl, seeking his unpigmented eyes and givin' off my own brand of menace.

When he got no response, Aro screamed like his balls were in a vice, "Caius!"

For once, I was gonna make damn sure to keep Bella safe. I held her behind me while Aro's savage eyes whipped back and forth.

Sam, Jacob, Paul, and Seth semi-circled behind him. Strands of gummy slobber looped from their jaws, and Caius's face hollowed with a deceptive grin.

Clearly not gettin' the picture, Aro persisted as if Caius was just hard of hearin', "My staff, _Brother_!"

Like a goddamn charlatan cheerleader, the Bologna _Busone_ twirled the baton-staff up into the air, bringing it down on his knee. Glassy shatters severed the connection between immaterial magic and madman Aro.

Now he was pissed. "You traitor!" Aro screamed.

I was lovin' this. I couldn't resist getting a dig in, "Y'all might even call him a liar."

"Kinda like Pinocchio," Jizz nodded.

Bella laughed, "Sounds like _finnochio._"

"It was just a prop," Cauis was well pleased with his own self. "And _you_ are a twat."

Succinct and to the point, you just couldn't argue with his logic.

So, Gay-Lord had been lordin' it over all of us, all the goddamned time. The mastermind, he'd set this whole shindig in motion by recruiting his militia, makin' the roofie, gettin' to Bella.

_Why, I ou__ghta kill him, too._

"You killed my flame, Felix," Caius ticked off on his fingers, slowly orbiting his half-brother who followed him with colorless eyes. "You _murdered_ your sister. You have _no_ humility."

Meanwhile, Marcus manifested from his own Zombieville to the land of the living to lay another one on us, "Didyme lives."

The man beneath the material became bigger and stronger as he shirked off his anchoring mantle of servility.

Conjured by his proclamation, a great wolf loped through the pandemonium of skirmishes and smoking bodies. She stood on her hind legs and became a woman. One of blackness, one of the tundra. Fogs rolled off her back quarters and a Siberian wind lifted her black tresses. Her eyes of silver slivered back-and-forth in primacy.

_Tamara_, Paul's thoughts zoomed in.

She swiveled her head towards him, brazenly licking her lips.

Katrina guarded him, and the two 'women' hissed spitefully at each other while Wildman was rent apart; half of him seeking the vixen, part of him panting for Katrina.

Backing away, Tamara beckoned to Marcus, "Come, Master. The Sovereign Lady awaits this news." Before she transformed into her true species, Tamara made some sort of inimitable contract with Paul, _I'll be seeing you very soon… very soon indeed._

As a timber wolf, she galloped across the terrain with Marcus shimmying on top of her broad back until they up and disappeared like no more than apparitions.

Caius curled his lips, "I must say, I've always hated the werewolves." Then he clapped his hands, "Mind, we'll get to them later. We have other matters to attend to in this charming abbey first, yes?"

I'd near forgotten Aro, but I wasted no time cranking his arms back until the balls were about to burst from their sockets.

Chave rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Why, Eddie, so keen! Would you like to do the honors?"

I sneered, "Care to make it two for one?"

"Oh, dear, sexy boy, you can have me any time you wish," he leered at me, "just not to kill."

I shrugged, "Worth a try, and as you said… we can get back to that another time, right?"

"Isabella?" Aro begged.

Unaffected, she rolled her eyes.

"Your hand, Bella, if you would," Caius took her palm in his.

"And will you give your hand to your lady, Eddie?" I hoped he wasn't referring to himself because Dude _did_ look like a lady.

Hoping for the best, "Fuck yes," I agreed.

With our fingers entwined, Caius placed our hands against Aro's forehead. Our thoughts rushed and hazed and crazed between us, Bella's mind to mine an open conduit that then blistered into Aro's.

Caius cruelly taunted, "You wanted omniscience and transcendence, Aro? Here's your big—_how would you people say it?_—reveal."

"Caius!" Aro gasped, struck blind by our powerful alliance, and our two bodies illuminated while his dimmed with the knowledge of every power play, each under-the-table dirty deal discovered.

I expected him to shrivel with a whiny, _"I'm melting…"_ And that would suck, because I still wanted to kill him.

Breakin' away, we watched Aro claw the ground, gain his feet.

Unsavory saliva dripping from his maw, Jacob used his snout to gangplank Aro to me.

I backhanded him into next week, or at least to his knees—another flash of thoughts raced between us with that tough-love-touch.

The whitewash of past and present and prophecies cycloning around us made me reel.

Bubba propped me up, "Braw?"

Crackin' my knuckles, I steadied myself, "Naw, I'm good."

Aro gave it one last college-try, "Eddie, don't you know your liege?"

"I know a leech when I see one," I arched an eyebrow.

"Remember what you said to me, Aro, that day you doomed my lover, Felix?" Caius reminded his brother why he wasn't just Queer Eye but also all about an eye-for-an-eye, "_All good things must come to an end._"

"Last words?" I asked.

For an instant, Aro was no longer feeble. He crouched down and glared at me, his voice a deep, intense timbre, "You wouldn't da-"

My hand meat-cleavering through his gurgling throat shut that the hell up. "Ashes to ashes, motherfucker."

His head dearly departed from his torso, Aro's body did that jacked-up, nervy chicken dance, and why not? We were still surrounded by those squawkers.

Once he fuckin' _finally_ flopped down, I kicked his body aside. I made right for Bella, bent her at the waist, hitched her thigh up over my hip and kissed the ever-lovin' shit outta of her.

Our lips slammed together, tongues reaching. Then we became softer, slower, all sultry and sexy with moans and hands fisting into shirts and hair. _Oh, Christ Almighty._

"Yeah," I leaned her up against me and nuzzled her tits. "Matter of fact, I ain't never been better."

_~Eternity: It's not just a cologne, it's a choice~_

On account of having to light up a lot to fire up the beheaded bbq briquettes, Carl was havin' a grand day… carte blanche with the cigars and all.

Just as he was about to spitroast Aro, Bella shouted, "Wait!"

_What?_

'Course because she gave the command, everyone stopped.

"Can I stuff him?"

I gave half a laugh and a frown, "No!"

"Waste of a good effin' effigy, if you ask me," Bella complained.

As he smoked like a pig carcass, another body deserved our respect.

Bella knelt beside Mama, giant tears raining down over her high-crested cheeks. "What about Mama Brown?"

Beside Bella, Rose cleared her throat a time or two, "May Mama rest in peace."

Carl and M'Esme covered her body with reverential hands. "She goes home." Maw already had a plan.

I held on real tight to Bella, she was tryin' to quell her sobs. My voice was gruff, "Goes without sayin'. Her people gonna want to give her a proper burial."

"We'll be there," Bella said with so much strength, so much sadness.

"'Course we will, darlin'."

JR and RJ slapped their caps to their thighs and bowed their heads. Garrett came outta nowhere—_as in, where the hell had he been durin' the hullabaloo?_—to add his, "She was a fine woman to all of you."

Garrett caught my glare. "What?"

"MIA much? You go on a Midnight Ride or somethin', Revere?"

"Listen, I've been through the Revolutionary War, the French and Indian War, the Civil War." Garrett pulled his straw colored hair back from his face. "Not to mention the World Wars. So I know a little bit about fighting. You might not have seen me engaged on the frontline-I dare say your attention was garnered elsewhere—but I had your rearguard."

_Rearguard?_

I looked at Caius, _obviously_.

"Yes, well. My due appreciation for your assistance in this endeavor, _friends._" He encased himself in his cloak and called his Minute Men and Women to his side.

Lined up, Caius, Chelsea, Eleazar, and Demetri didn't so much as have their hats in their hands as their hearts in their throats.

"Aw, fuck it." I administered. "G'on then."

"They're gonna get off scot-free?" Bubba complained.

Maw approved, "Just like the paper towel."

Bella tucked herself against my side, humming hotly against my throat, running her hands down my ribs. "You're a good man, Eddie Cullen."

From the other side came a call that turned into a chant, "Long Live the Queen!"

Caius took a bow. Met with silence, he pressed his fingertips to his pursed mouth, "Oh my! You weren't talking about me, were you?"

Bella asked me quietly, "So, if I'm the Queen, does that make you King?"

_I might-could live with that._ "Yeah, but not one of them downtown, Lacoste wearin' King Legare types, though, 'cause that ain't never gonna happen," I made clear.

Jizz joked, "King Tosser the Turd, like I always said." He broke out the fancy toothpicks with little South Carolina flags on the end.

"Been savin' those for a special occasion?"

"Yep."

Maw gave him a nice skull-crack. "Them things are cocktail do-hickeys, Jasper."

Bubba added, "_Cock and tail._ Now that's right up his alley, ain't it?"

"Stop putzing around," I told 'em. "I'm serious here." I looked at Caius, "So?"

Mindful that I could still kill him, Caius looked aside. "Well, strictly speaking, since you're not married…"

_What the fuck was with all this nuptial nonsense?_ "Well, that's a bullshit technicality if I ever heard one."

The battle over, everyone started headed off.

Like an old, _married_ couple, Eleazar said to Irina, "We can go home now."

"I'll need you back by the end of September; we'll reconvene after summer recess." Caius was takin' to his new role like a duck to water. When Eleazar held tighter to his woman, Caius magnanimously relented, "Yes, she can accompany you."

Demetri quietly snorted coke in the background.

Heidi, the Telly Savalas of turncoats, joined their ranks.

JR/RJ already had their thumbs out, _really._ Turfin' it to… _well, that was anybody's guess._

At the end of this fucking day, I just couldn't help myself. I unsnapped Bella's robe and slid it off her shoulders. My tongue darting to her wrist, her elbow, the most sensitive flesh of her neck, I rasped my Pavlov against her pussy. "I want you."

Someone admonished, "Get a room!"

All the couples were wrapped around each other… not like it was just us. Near death had that 'wanna fuck' effect on everyone. _Even Caius-fuck me-but don't… really._

Doom and gloom behind us, I did just that, gained us a room, or at least the long, cool, dim passageway of the monastery.

She had on a tanktop and short skirt. Heels.

_Holy hell, she looked good._

I stroked her thighs with my tongue, tugged her top down, ran my rough fingertips over her nipples until the hot points were high peaks.

Placing my head against her lithe belly, I groaned over the sensual scent, _the sexual feel of her._

A procession of brethren came around the corner and started crossing themselves.

I growled, "If'n y'all don't want to get an eyeful, you better make your rounds to another part of the friary."

Bella gasped when I cupped her pussy in my hand, "_Oh Mary Magdalene!_" She ripped my t-shirt off and licked from my abs to my chest. "_Outside!_ Just do Hail Marys or something outside, before you get—_fuck!_—an earful!"

Throwing her head back, Bella bunched my hair, grabbed my shoulders, widened her legs to let me in.

Her panties were shorn.

Her breasts heavin'.

Full of desire, she watched me when I teased her. A lick of my tongue, a pinch of my thumb around her delicate clit. _"Eddie, _please, baby."

I smiled. "Yeah?" I toyed with her swollen, slick lips. "What you want, darlin'?"

Denied so long, she wasn't havin' any of it. Bella toppled me onto my back, shredded my jeans off my hips, licked her lips and dragged me into her mouth until my hips punched up, and my hands blasted the tiled floor to pieces!

"FUCK!"

"_Yes."_

Her satiny skin was damn wondrous when I circled her hips, my thumbs diggin' into her waist. Her nipples teased me, and I nipped them, sucked them, made love to them.

"_Mmmm," _I hummed, divin' into her lush cleavage.

"More."

"I thought I'd never-" I widened my thighs and watched as she settled herself over my thick, rigid, so-ready cock.

Riding me with sinful undulations, Bella lowered her tits so their engorged points brushed boldly against me. "I was with you!"

Pumping up and down, she ruled me. Watchin' my dick part her, I felt every rippling vein of my cock, every motion of her glorious cunt slipping over me, makin' me harder and hornier.

She sat right over me, throbbing heat makin' me distend and reach up inside her depths. Her arms went around my back and our lips layered the most intense kisses. "I never left." Bella cupped my face. "I _never_ left you, Eddie."

Shifting so she was in my lap, I held her ankles within my grasp, "Jesus Fuckin' Christ, Bella! If you ever pull a stunt like that again-"

Her plush lips silenced me. Her nails scratched my thighs, her tits blossomed up with each thrust, her hair tasseled my balls when she bowed back… she craved this as much as me. "Shut up and fuck me, Eddie," Bella demanded in that husky-honey voice of hers.

Every screaming, teaming taut muscle of my body reacted. I lunged into her.

"Yes. _YES!_"

Enraptured, we fucked. Sweat and sex and cum was smeared between us. At the end, when no fuckin' power on this earth could part us, we curled together, crying out, "_Oh GOD!"_

"Fucking _HELL, Bella!_"

My forearm straddled her back, my hand deep in her hair, my free arm bracing my body up from the stone floor as my cock drove furiously into her. Bucking on top of me, Bella's face was rapturously stunning. "_Yes, yes, CHRIST EDDIE!"_

"_Aahhhhhh!"_ I grunted. She froze with her tits to the heavens, my dick exploding in the very deepest part of her pussy, her clenching muscles sucking all the cum out of me.

And everything stopped, one more time. For life and love and lust instead of death.

Eventually, when we could even friggin' move again, breathless laughs jostled between us.

We'd been to hell and back, done all that happy horseshit stuff.

No way was my cock leaving her body… least not once we got settled again.

"You're ready to go again."

"Damn straight."

"You think we could go someplace more private first?"

"S'pose." I groused.

Agonizingly, I groaned and withdrew from her. _Gently, _after wetting my tee in some baptismal font or other, I washed over Bella's legs, and boobs, and tenderly between her thighs where I stopped to soothingly blow across her delicious mound.

Takin' my shirt from me, Bella hauled me up for a sweet kiss. "I love you."

I grabbed her ass, _because I finally could_. "I love you, too, Bella."

"So," I draped my arm over her shoulders, slanted down my camouflage visor, and we parted the carved oak doors of Mepkin Abbey, "where to?"

"Luxury Hollows, _baby._"

* * *

~This is not the end ;). A final chapter to come, y'all! But don't miss this opp. to tell Eddie (and me) what you think! The reviews for this fic have always been absolutely stunning, keep it up!~

**Chapter Notes:**

Mepkin Abbey really does make and sell all the yummy stuff mentioned. The beer? OMFG-good, and the shrooms ain't bad either ;).

Eddie quoted some from Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_, Marcus did a little _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (aw, the romantic!), and Arsehole worked the _Hamlet_.

**Italian words: **scarafaggio: cockroach, finocchio: faggot, busone: passive homosexual/'a bottom'

**Motherfuckin' HOT Dead Confeds Slideshow:**

www . flickr . com/photos/51760905N08/sets/72157624646555613/show/

**The Dead Confeds Videos:**

youtube . com/playlist?p=PL6A24F168389F96D4

**Love Advocated Recommended on Fanfic Aholics (squee!):**

fanficaholics . blogspot . com/2011/06/indie-zen-weekly . html?zx=b4b390f0e9863f06

**Spank the Monkey!**

Yeah, you read that right ;). I'm judging, along with a panel of 'learned' ff writers (bwah ha ha!), in the Spank the Monkey contest, hosted by Sue of SYTYCW, Bellaflan, & Magnolia822! It is what it says, all about letting your character get him/herself off ;). Entries until July 7th, so whip it out and show us a sexy wank!

fanfiction . net/~spankthemonkey4u

Cheers,

Rie~


	36. The New South

****Huge-ass author's note headed y'all's way, feel free to skip it & read after the chapter, but please do read****

To the two most important women in Eddie's life (apart from Bella), all my love and respect goes out to Vanessarae and Viola Cornuta who took a fuck-lot of time on every chapter and never put up with any of Eddie's guff (or mine). They didn't just help with grammar; they aided me in hammering out the plot, came up with tons of content notes and advice/additions, and generally held my hand while givin' me a smack to the back of the head. 3.

Some big lovin' to my BFF GeeKay! Honestly, without her daily Eddie ramblings this thing never would have seen the light of day . I can't tell you how many ridiculously loud (and usually inappropriate) conversations we've had about this dude and his antics, and she's constantly making me lmfao with lowcountry goodies to include in the story. *mwah*

Thanks to those wonderfully talented women who have blown the roof off the trailer with their artwork and videos! Not even kidding: there are close to 200 DC banners and 13 vids! That's insane! The links to the banner slideshow and the video channel are on my profile in addition to interviews with both me and Eddie, etc. So, giant kisses first to MsEm and Lindz (who did a lot of work for the blog art), to Amanda DcCullen, Bell Jacobsen, Kerry Delaney, DDG, Cracky, Indie, RMCC, Meg Uhbot, Krazichick, Bobby D., CullenGirl, Kimmi, Gasaway, TwifanUK, ROBZSINGER…and many more (I'm sorry if I've forgotten anyone, you know I fuckin' love you!). Also, thanks to a very close friend who has helped me with my writing, my blogs, and simply been there to lend an ear or tell me dirty stuff to make me laugh, you know who you are.

Gotta say how much I respect and admire the writers who took on _Rebelward Without a Cause_ outtakes: Vanessarae, RowanMoon, Frol223, Gasaway Alley, Viola Cornuta, Jaspersbrand, and winterstale. Amongst their stories, they gave incredible life to the other Dead Confederate characters and furthered the plot! And, they're totally awesome writers in their own right. Love you guys ;).

Mega loves to my original DW h00rs—most of these chicks have been with me since _before_ DC's…that's almost three fucking years! Rowan, Gassy, Mer, Rosabella, Pixie, Viola, Viridis, winterstale, twiliteaddict, TwifanUK…feel like I'm forgetting someone…feel free to whip me ;). 'Course, cannot forget Eddie's FB ladies! What the fuck can I say about that? Y'all took the trailer park by friggin' storm and have made every day so funny, sexy, sassy, and entertainin' for both me and Eddie. 3 3 3. Same shit goes to all of you who have read, and the biggest love to y'all reviewers and bloggers and tweeters; it would be really sad to write something no one talked about…I've been extemremely lucky, thank you. And to Bella Flan and AngryBadgerGirl for listenin' to my mad rants at one time or another (also for prereading), and to my pervy partner in crime, QuantumFixxz!

**Note re. the previous chapter: **if you didn't get the Tamara/Marcus/Didyme references, you need to read the Iron Maiden outtake ;).

**Disclaimer**: Hmm, lemme see. I own "Eddie", Bubba, Jizz, Tinker Hell, Rebella, M'Esme, Paw, the zombies, Mama Brown (_may she rest in peace_), the loopy loup garu, Vigilante Rose. I also got me a double wide, The Bronco, the Sunday Best Truck, a broken iPod (or four), and a whole lotta love for my southern crew . Twilight? Eh, that ain't mine.

Finally (and I swear, I'll shut the fuck up now), I want to remind y'all of the timeline for Dead Confederates. It began in the March 2009 and ends in September of 2009. So all this shit that went down with Eddie and Bella and co. happened over one very intense spring and summer.

~~ Two years of my life y'all, and so much damn fun! Yeah, so pass me the damn Kleenex, because…this chapter is a little bit of _everything_ DC's to me. Oh, and I could use a PBR too ;)~~

**Long Live Rebelward!**

Thanks to Mz for the song .

**Song:**

_Barton Hollow, _The Civil Wars

youtube . com/watch?v=ooTyuRd9zSg

* * *

**The New South**

I walked out of the double wide, almost lettin' the screen door slam, but then I remembered Bella splayed out on my bed, just a sheet coverin' her naked body, sleepin' soundly.

Well, she would be dead to the world after what we'd gotten up to.

Jizz had the scuffed heels of his mud-crusted cowboy boots propped on the porch railin'. I cuffed his Stetson off and jumped over his legs, landin' on the other side of Bubba.

"Watcha whittlin'?" I reached for a cold one, my own safely enclosed in the crotch of my jeans. _For the time bein' anyway. _

Bubba grinned wordlessly. _Shee-it_, knock a few teeth outta that mouth and he'd fit right in with the yokels. He was holdin' up his latest Kama Sutra specimen for my perusal. Kneelin' between his woman's thighs, the male had his hands cupped over her tits with his fingers pluckin' her nipples up hard and tight.

I took a swig, finishin' my beer in one long draw. "What's it called?"

Bubba turned the joined figures over in his hands, all proud of himself. "Victory."

"Feels good." I nodded.

"Y'already tried it?"

"What? No.… _well_ _probably_, me and Bella been at it for days. But I meant Victory - winnin' and shit."

Junior decided to get jizzosophical. "The price of victory is high, but so are the rewards."

Bubba asked, "That that Shakespeare dude again?"

"Nah, from Bama's Crimson Tide, that is."

"Sounds 'bout right, crimson tide," I commented.

Bubba pulled out his keys to punch a hole in his beer can so's he could shotgun it. When he'd finished, he backhanded his mouth and mumbled solemnly, "Sure was a shame about Mama Brown. Don't know if Rose is gonna get over it. She's takin' it real bad."

"Least she'll be kept busy managin' the barbeque joint," Jizz said.

"Damn right," I added. "Mama did a good thing by her, and Caleb… leavin' them the place."

We had us a moment of silence for big ol' Mama.

Always the eavesdroppin' empath, Junior leaned around Bubba's hulking form. "What was she thinkin', that moment before she died? She was lookin' right at you."

Slumpin' against the back of the couch, I muttered, "She said we was gonna be just fine. She even gave that deep, lusty belly laugh of hers, you know?" I peered at Bubba and Jizz. "She weren't sad. She said her mama and her daddy was waitin' for her. And she prayed, '_Fagibe we fa de bad ting we da do. 'Cause we da fagibe dem people wa do bad ta we_.'"

"And?" Jizz wrangled a toothpick from his back pocket.

I shook my head and shut my eyes. "She told me we need to be watchin' the black wolf and the nighttime woman."

Bubba spread his knees to reach under the couch and pull out a cardboard box filled with his tools. "Yeah, that Didyme bitch? What the fuck's her deal, anyways?"

Rubbin' my chest, I tried to ignore the gnawing feelin' there. "I 'spect we're gonna find out."

"I don't plan on thinkin' about that right now," Bubba spat out over the railin', effortlessly bulls-eyein' the tin can strung from one of the southern pines.

I fist bumped him. "Me neither. Had enough of that Volturi shit to last me _all_ my lifetimes."

Tunin' in the black and white RCA, I skimmed through a variety of talk shows all revolvin' around the same theme with only the most minute differences: He's my daddy, He's my baby-daddy, I never knew my daddy, Here's how to get a sugar daddy in ten easy steps. All the same fuckin' vacant verbal upchuckin' in case we happened to think for one second and get a bad case of cerebral overload. Word was, even Oprah was throwin' in the towel. Not that I watched her self-help shit either, but man, the times they were a'changin'.

What I wouldn't give for a rip-roaring, Indian summer political scandal to heat up the airwaves. No one'd come close to trumpin' Big Dawg Clinton and Monica Screwinsky in years, and that was a cryin' shame. Guv'nor Sanford of our own fair South Cackalakee had tried his best, but even his fake hike up the Appalachians to land miraculously face first in the Amazonian rainforest-referrin' to his babe's bush, 'course-of some Buenos Ares adulteress paled in comparison to El Presidenté shootin' his six gun off with an intern in the Oval Orifice.

"Fuck, brother, that one should go down in the annals," Jizz pushed Bubba out of the way to give me a congratulatory skull-rub.

"What?"

"You just said all that shit out loud, braw," Bubba belched his sentence out in one long burp.

"Yeah, well, _annals_, anal-tomato, _tomahto_; just be keepin' all that crap away from me. I know your girl ain't got the proper equipment to hit all the right spots, but we might-could get Maw to order her a strap-on. Lawd knows M'Esme's a preferred shopper at Goodvibes." I covered my cock with my hands, because that tool was For Use by Bella Only.

Already the owner of cocksleeves and other cuntraptions, Bubba brought the topic back around to Bella. "Where's your woman at?"

"Snoozin'." I could say that now, instead of 'sleeping'. I'd set my Timex for two hours; damn straight I was gonna wake her up. I hadn't had near enough of her.

Although, she had a right to be tired. Savin' me had taken some out of her. _Her heart is her weakness, her blood is your strength. Take her, Son._ That's what Carl had said when Bella had stripped open her artery and poured her warm blood into my parched mouth. She had my venom in her, and I had her blood. We were each other's saviors, if'n I had to get all metaphysical about it.

Bubba'd probably lay it out like this—with a handy, whittled visual aid—Bella and me were Yin and Yang. Two parts of a whole capable of regeneratin' the other.

Yeah, makin' me right again had taken it out of her, and I'd been puttin' a lot back in. _Often._

"Wore her out, huh?" As Bubba stretched his arms back, I smacked him in the gut for bein' impolite about Bella.

Truth was though, I didn't mind remembering.

Breakfast a few hours earlier had brought some goddamn glad tidings.

Bracing my palms against the table, I'd rocked my hips forward. "C'mon, darlin'. You know you like my Shaft's Spread."

Breakin' into that smile I'd missed, Bella had scooted forward, her warm breath susurrating against the soft placket of my jeans. "I asked for the Shedd's Spread, baby, for my-"

"Muffin. I know," I'd interrupted. My damn erection was about to erupt right in front of her face!

She'd arched her toes on the lino, balancing the chair onto its hind legs. "This another of your Country Cock moments?"

"All's I'm sayin' is, I got your _breakfast of champions_ right here." I'd lewdly grabbed my crotch. Passing my fingers over her thighs, I'd parted the short skirt of her robe and-_fuck me_—she'd been all warm and nude underneath.

Smirkin' up at me, Bella had the frickin' audacity to say, "I'm just not sure it's gonna fill me up."

_Smart woman, she'd quickly put the table between us_.

My growl had been a low rumble, a challenge. "Oh, I'm pretty sure satisfaction's one hundred percent guaran-fuckin'-teed."

Then I'd pounced. She mighta been newborn fast, but I was a vampire with a mission: to get good and goddamn laid… _she'd had no chance of outrunnin' me. _

I'd skimmed around her ass and lifted her up high enough her boobs were full in my face, the robe's tie draping down my chest. Slippin' my tongue beneath the thin cotton, I'd circled one nipple. Hungry for more, I'd pushed her tits together and sucked at both of them. Bringin' her up higher, I stopped for an instant. My mouth at her wet, pretty slit, her hands tangled in my hair, her hips swirlin' in front of my face. "_Damn_, I'm starvin', Bella."

I dove in, driving tongue first with furious lust. Licking the outer frilled edges of her plump lips, curlin' into the wet, hot middle where her sex split, _sliding_ up to the firm nub of her clit. I'd sucked that pearl in between my teeth until she'd screamed. Her warm cream was all over my face, and _fuck yes_, I lapped it all up.

The jam went flyin'.

Her knees were around my neck, then around my hips. Her heels shoved into my ass and propelled me forward. She'd scattered all the cereal boxes to the floor in a mess of fuckin' granola and Wheaties and other humanoid crap.

I'd sat. She'd followed.

She shed that cotton robe and put her heels to rest on the arms of the chair, on either side of me. Openin' herself to me. The tight shell of her pussy lifted every time I touched my cock down.

"You gonna fuck me now?" Her hips had twisted.

My cheeks had hollowed. My voice was gritty. "_Yeah_. Right now."

I rammed her until my balls slapped her ass and her neck rolled back with a throaty, "YES! Just like… _that_."

The pulsatin' waves of her orgasm threw her velvety cunt around me, holdin' me in a fuckin' wondrous vice.

"Fucking JESUS!" she'd shouted.

"_Just_," I'd eased out, sundered slowly back in, "Eddie, darlin'."

A heatwave hurtled up from my nuts and all through my cock. I mighta felt bad about blowin' my wad within five thrusts, but I'd be ready again in about ten minutes, so I didn't really give a fuck.

My stomach went tight and I… I… I grabbed Bella's shoulders, jerkin' inside of her, basting her with the cold froth of my cum until my seed and her river of release smathered down our thighs. I shunted forward one last time, a long groan rollin' like my hips into the womanly bowl of her body, "_Goddamn_, Bella."

"You blaspheming me now?"

"Hell, woman, I cain't even… _what_?" Shoot, I was done-for.

She'd laughed. Kissed my chest right where she resided inside of me.

"This kitchen…"

"I know, it's bitchin', right?" The fuckin' place was tore up.

"We gotta clean this mess," she'd yawned, "before M'Esme shows up."

"Leave it to me." I'd swatted her ass for an extra grope. "Go'on, git to bed."

Her fingers had skimmed down my arms, her lips slipped from the corner of my mouth to my throat, "You're such a good man, Eddie."

I'd dropped my head, "Only for you, Bella."

Our fingertips had held until the last moment.

I'd given her ten minutes to fall asleep, then I'd gone into my room. I'd kissed her sunfresh cheek, her orchard lips. I'd covered her up. Managed to prevent Bubba burstin' in to tell her about his latest romance novel finds. Lately he'd been all about the Mills and Boon. _Mills and Poon,_ I liked to call it. Apparently so did a lot of other narrow-minded twats out there. Every day, Bubba was in a rare rantin' mood, emailin' my account with so-called pseudo-scientific research 'bout how women readin' cock-fiction was the latest cause of unplanned pregnancies, STDs and busted-up marriages.

_What-the-fuck-ever._

Hell, if a man couldn't keep his woman happy—like I could, for fuckin' instance—he had a lot more to blame than some Fabio-faced romance novels.

"I bought Bella some of this here poo-pourri." Bubba disrupted my reverie, huntin' around his toolbox again.

"The fuck?" I asked. I was all dazed and happily confused. I knew I had a foolish grin on my mouth. But did I give a fuck?

_Nah._

_Bella was back with me._

Bubba produced the so-called poo-pourri; a fat brown-glass bottle of smelly potion that read 'Spritz the bowl before you go, and no one else will ever know!'

I glared at him. "The hell kinda welcome home present is that?"

He _spritzed _his poo-pourri in my face. "What? Shit's like a sunburnt dick. You can't beat it, dude."

Grabbin' the bottle, I squirted it at him before jumpin' off the porch and heaving it straight over the roof of the trailer. The fucker glinted in the sun, becomin' so tiny before it vanished from sight it was nothin' but a speck against the horizon. I called over to the peanut gallery, "I ain't discussin' Bella's business with y'all."

Jizz hooted, "Aw, ain't that cute. They're still in the honeymoon period."

"More like horneymoon, bro. We ain't tied the knot."

I checked my watch—thirty minutes until Bella Time—and shared a joint with Jizz. I did my best to ignore Bubba's bleating about the waste of a good air freshener.

When my cell bleeped with an incoming message, I flicked it open with one hand, squintin' at the screen through a thick haze hashish smoke.

_U R A FUCKHEAD._

Bubba sat titterin' to himself while Jizz peered over my shoulder to read it.

I quickly tapped out a little warnin' to the true fuckhead of the crew, "U R DEAD MEAT."

Jizz chuckled, "Statin' the obvious there, ain'tcha?"

Hardly givin' Bubba a chance to check the message I sent, I pile-drived him down to the floor, slammin' his head through the planks so a rainshower of raspy splinters hailed around us.

After crushing his skull, I _crushed_ his cell with a mere squeeze of my fist, then sent it with a mighty swing to go the way of his poofy-smellin' poo-pourri.

"That was harsh, braw," he whined.

I almost felt bad. Thinkin' it was the least I could do after destroying his phone, I bent over to give him a hand up… next thing I knew Bubba flung me over the porch railin' and into the dusty craters of our lawn. We were wrestling it out from one end of the yard to the other, Jizz refereeing from his seat on the porch, when an ear-splittin' whistle brought us up short.

"Fuck," I muttered.

"Maw," Bubba mumbled.

Before we could scramble to our feet, she was on top of us and dealin' out more auricular abuse, haulin' us up by our ears. "Boys. I'd have thought you'd gotten your fill of fightin'."

The Hamburglar grimaced by her side.

"But-"

"Don't wanna hear it, from either one of you." Her sayin' that about audiological abilities was kinda ironic or somethin', considering my ears were still ringing from her shrill whistle.

"Yes Ma'am," we said in unison.

"We got a party tonight, boys, and y'all will _not_ be greetin' your guests like this." Her eyes raked disgustedly over our dirt-splattered, ripped clothes.

"No, Ma'am." I scratched my jaw, Bubba took off his cap and lowered his head.

"And you smell like a French whore, Bubba. I suggest you clean yourself up."

Having rode in on her own broom,Betty Black Arts frowned as she looked us over from top to toe, until she spied Jizz up on the porch. She broke out into a smile and a run, her hobo bag bulgin' with purloined party favors, her feet leavin' the earth as she spun up into his waiting arms.

Dutifully, me and Bubba followed Maw to the trailer, silently shovin' each other as hard as we could.

'Course, when she saw the state of the floor where Bubba had caved it in, Maw pitched a new fit, flingin' her genteel swear words left and right. "You little so-and-so's! You got some darned fixin' up to do on this porch, _again_." She continued grousing, "Anyone would think you boys were brought up in a barn…"

Right then my watch went off. I gave Maw a big hug and she looked at me suspiciously even though I could tell she was trying not to smile. I grinned at Junior and Bubba. "Yeah, you boys just straighten yourselves out." I even nodded solicitously at the Twat O' Nine Tales.

I made for the door and almost took it off its hinges.

Maw asked, "Where's the fire, Eddie?"

The Shifty Swami was tongue-locked with Jizzper, but she still managed to explain, "Bella Time."

I was already halfway down the hall when I hard Maw, "In that case, we better clear out. Give the lovebirds some privacy."

_Lovebirds?_

Hell, I was goddamn cock of the walk.

_~~ll~~_

Bella was just rolling onto her back when I got to the bedroom. Her smile was warm and lazy. "_Mmmm, _hey baby."

Closing the door, I leaned against it, just takin' in the sight of her in my bed. Tousled and sexy and motherfuckin' mine. "Hi darlin'."

Figuring that was enough of the pleasantries, I ambled over, slipped my hand up her ankle to her calf, and whipped the sheet right off her.

"Eddie! It's cold!"

I prowled up her body, lovin' the way she arched against me, all hot and soft and languid, her bare tits the best friggin' pillows ever invented. "Don't you worry 'bout that none. I'm gonna warm you right up."

Fingering through my hair, scratchin' her nails down my back, Bella kissed me teasingly. Soft and sweet one moment, deep and wet and dirty the next.

I leaned up to cup her tits, lookin' into her eyes while I lowered my mouth to one luscious, round hill. Circlin' her creamy flesh with my tongue, I sucked on the heavy underside of one orb then the other before making a slow trail up to a peaked nipple.

A husky moan curled out of her lips. Her eyes closed; all the better to feel me sucking, lickin', pinching.

Once I'd traveled to her other breast, leavin' a nice wet trail in her cleavage that I slipped my fingers down, I thought it might be a good time for a tit fuck.

Bella's hips were circling sensually against my cock. I reached between us to undo my fly for a little breathin' room. Her hands stopped mine. Draggin' my teeth along her bottom lip I asked, "What? You wanna do the honors?"

Her laugh was shaky, breathless. She drew both our hands up her body and away from my aching dick. "You ready for the Q & A session now?"

Tilting my head, I urgently pressed our lips together in a passionate collision of tongues. I mumbled, "Fuck yeah. Long as that stands for quim and ass."

She scrambled out from under me. "We should talk about what happened."

_Fucking now? My cock was about the size of a baseball bat. Hell, I was surprised it hadn't just gone ahead and torn through my jeans already. _

I smoothed my palms up the insides of her thighs, partin' her legs, gettin' ready to fill my face with her pussy. "Talkin's for people who got nothin' better to do." I dipped a finger from her belly button to her bright, engorged clit. "And we got somethin' way better to do."

Her hips rushed toward my dancin' fingertip, but her tone was defiant. "So, you don't want to know what happened in Italy? I know you been worryin' about Demetri."

_Fucking Demetri. Bane of my existence. After Yogi-Alice, Caius, Marcus, Cacky, Dasher, et.-fuckin'-cetera._ My head snapped up. "He fuckin' touch you? 'Cause I'll relieve him of his hands, if that's the case."

Rearrangin' the sheet over herself, Bella pulled me up to face her. "No, 'course not. You know I'd never let anyone else touch me, baby. Nothin' happened with Demetri… he was a perfect gentleman."

I sagged back onto the bed, hookin' my forearms over my face. "Gentleman, right."

"Gentleman with a general overuse of illicit drugs, then. But yeah. He took me to Volterra. He never laid a hand on me. He made sure no one else did either. D was-"

My voice came out sharp, "D?"

"Yeah, D. We just talked a lot." I could feel her movin' to kneel beside me, her hands caressin' up and down my arms, but I still kept my face blocked. "I was lonely without you, and he was the only friend I had."

"Y'all BFFs now? Braid his hair, too?" I sat up, but kept my eyes averted.

She was havin' none of it. She damn made me look at her, her hands on my face, her eyes earnest. "I missed you so much, Eddie. If I could have been with you, I-" Like wet diamonds, tears escaped her eyes. I brushed them away tenderly. _Fuck, I hated when she cried._ "Demetri wasn't a replacement for you. Don't you know it by now?" She gave a shake of her head. "There is _no_ replacing you, Eddie."

I wanted to believe her, but man, sometimes I thought this was all too good to be true. Frustrated—not the least, sexually—_irritated_, I cursed, "Fuck. FUCK! It should've been _me_ makin' sure you were all right, not frickin' Demetri."

"Eddie-"

"No, damn it! Why the hell did you leave me, Bella? You have any idea how fucked up I was?" I pushed myself to the edge of the mattress. "What the frig was so all-fire important you had to go to Volterra?"

"_You_ were, _you are_, you thick man."

I blustered a bit.

"You ready to hear it all now?"

I shrugged.

"You wanna get more comfortable first?" She watched me warily, but with the slightest teasin' smile at the corner of her lips.

I grumpily replied, "No."

"Maybe lose the t-shirt? Unbutton your jeans? Usually that's the first thing you do when you see me." She flirted shamelessly until she got a rise outta me.

I looked over at her, my eyes dark. "I start undressin' now and I ain't stoppin' until I got you all laid out under me, writhing and moanin' and beggin' for my cock."

The intensity of my stare heated her face and the telltale sex flush rose up her chest. She whispered, "Yeah, you better keep your clothes on."

Givin' her a half smile, I went to stand beside the tiny window, waiting for what she had to say.

Pullin' her rich hair over her shoulders, Bella began. "Eleazar was sent by Caius to see if it was all true, to make sure you had fallen in love with a human woman named Bella Swan."

I couldn't help the way my hand lifted to my chest, to the heart she'd convinced me I had. Neither could I stop my disparagin' growl, "Fuckin' Skeezy. Hate that cunt."

"Chelsea had to… well, she was supposed to convince me that the only way to save y'all was to let you change me. According to the 'Swan-Cullen-Volturi' prophecy—that thing Alice kept talking about—the Volturi knew a woman who was only half a vampire would succeed the king. Only Chelsea didn't let me in on the fact that none of this was really decided. _No one_ told me I was just a needle in a haystack and they were all waitin' to see if I would become the way I am now. Part human, part vampire." She nodded down at herself.

"Fuckin' unique, Bella, that's what you are," I reached over to glide a finger down her cheek.

"But that Whoreface Chelsea, she's another one I wouldn't mind messin' up," I spat, beginnin' to pace around the room.

Bella hugged her knees and watched me. "Demetri-"

I slammed the lid of the upright piano shut with a deafenin' _boom_. Bella sprung at me, held onto me, wrapped herself around me so I could feel her heart beatin' away against me. _Fuck, she was strong_. I closed my arms around her, liftin' her up my body until our hips were flush. _Damn, I was gettin' turned on._ For all of about three minutes my Pavlov had been under a restrainin' order, now it was all I could do to contain my lust to just be inside her… right… fucking… then.

Her voice was low and quiet and close to my ear, thrillin' me with each exhale even while her words made my jaw clench. "He gave me the drug to knock you out. He assured me you wouldn't be hurt, Eddie. That was," her face turned into my neck, and I knew the slickness of her tears on my skin again, "it was _horrible_. Seein' you unconscious, knowing I'd done that to you." She hiccupped a few times. Her hands twisted into my shirt. "Demetri escorted me to Italy. I went there for you… I'm sorry. It was the only choice."

I brought her legs up around my waist and sat down on the bed with her in my lap. "I really wish you hadn't had to do that. What the fuck? Am I some pathetic loser who needs protectin'?"

"No, 'course not, Eddie." She pushed my chin up and cocked her head to the side. "You're a fine, strong man with a gorgeous heart who takes care of his people no matter the cost. But that don't mean you can win a war on your own, and I'd have done anything to stack the odds in your favor."

_She was so beautiful and fierce in that moment it fuckin' made me want her all the more. _

I leaned in to kiss her, but only got her fingertips instead of her lips. "I'm not done, baby."

I tried not to grin at her forthrightness.

"Caius, with his hands in _all_ the pies, got quite the feather in his cap when he presented me to Aro. And Aro was easy enough to fool, his own arrogance blinded him, and my mind thwarted him."

"Friggin' Queerus, more like his hands in all the boys' flies and a gross hard-on in his grosgrain jock. "

She smacked my shoulder, stiflin' a giggle. "_Anyway, _Aro figured if he had me, he could get you; I was the bait and trap. He thought you'd either agree willingly or he'd snag you through sheer force. Only problem was, he wanted to wait for you to come to Italy. And we couldn't have that; the coup could never go off there, not with all his acolytes."

I insulted, "Yeah, all them light-in-the-loafers _acolytes_, wouldn't want to pit me against his court of cocksuckers, would we?"

"It _had_ to be here, baby. Get Aro away from his stronghold, defeat him, and then Caius could return triumphantly and set up his own shop…no one could dispute it! There'd be no revolt. Caius knew you'd have numbers—Eddie, I was never so happy to see two zombies in my life. JR/RJ? That was awesome! And Leah and the loup garou? Even better, because Caius had learned about them from Eleazar, but Aro didn't have a clue. Gettin' the vultures here, addin' Caius' crew to ours… _we could win, _baby."

I couldn't dispute the logistics, but that didn't mean I had to be happy about it.

"It was my job to convince him to bring the battle to you."

_Oh_, and I was even less happy about _that. _"Hope you didn't convince Aro the way you sway me. Believe me; I know just how persuasive you can be."

"Eddie, no! If you wanna know, I told him there was no freakin' way you'd leave South Carolina. _Hard motherfucker, first and foremost._ You wouldn't come for me, because I'd left you."

I got down on the floor beside her then, my hands encirclin' her waist and caressing up to her ribs, my thumbs brushin' lightly under the globes of her tits. I looked at her, my eyes true and turbulent. "You got one thing right there, Bella. But I would have gone for you."

"I know, baby." She bent down to coast her lips over my jaw. "I know."

"So what about this royalty shit?"

She snorted. "We both know I ain't cut out to be a queen."

We shared a laugh, each of us thinkin' of Caius, the royal rump ranger.

But I shook my head. "Beg to differ. Just fuckin' look at you. Gorgeous, strong, smart, fuckin' regal…" I kissed the sensitive skin down her arm to her wrist, raised my eyes to hers.

"Ahhh, who knows? That legend could just be a big load of bullshit anyways. But if I can help change the regime, guarantee safety for vampires and shapeshifters… Aro did some bad shit." She slipped down beside me, snugglin' into my arms. "He committed some atrocious acts, not the least to you."

"Yeah, he did. The motherfucker's dead now though, so..." I stood up and lifted her quickly, settlin' her in my arms.

Kickin' open the door, I carried her out the back and down a trail that was dusky in the faint sun glow filterin' through pines and palms and rustlin' brush.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and giggled, "Where you takin' me?"

"It's a surprise." I busied myself with hoppin' over the dense knuckles of roots, duckin' beneath limbs whose leaves were feathery soft slaps against our arms and faces.

The dapplin' light through the forest's canopy made her smilin' face so goddamn beautiful.

I bent low to kiss her slowly, just our lips, just a touch of our tongues turnin' together.

A good fifty yards into the woods, I set her down.

She turned around and backed into me, my arms loopin' around her waist, my chin on her shoulder. "What's this?" she asked, a little bit of wonder in her voice.

"Made a lake for ya."

She spluttered, "You just… decided to make a lake."

"Yeah, thought you'd like it."

Her fingertips to her mouth couldn't contain her laughs as she took in the clear pool of water in front of her. It was so still out here, the surface shimmered like a pane of glass, not a ripple of scorchin' wind touched the intimate glen I'd carved out.

I briefly touched her shoulders and the scintillatin' line of her back before tuggin' off my shirt. Walkin' in front of her, I toed off my boots and socks, peeled down my jeans and stood with my hands at my sides.

When she saw me, totally naked, completely hard and strainin' for her, her breath whooshed out with a sultry, "Jesus Christ, Eddie."

"Again, just Eddie." I winked at her.

She swayed to me, the sheet she still wore went out behind her like a bright white gown, her eyes the deepest brown, her lips parted and invitin'.

On her knees, she took me into her mouth. No warnin', no teasin', just the deep satin heat of her tongue and lips, the damp verge of her throat, and her moans, my groans. My head fell back and my hips dipped, my cock slid in and out as she tucked her tongue all along the length of me, then down to my balls.

"_Oh fuck, Bella._"

I wanted a blow job. _I really fuckin' wanted a blow job._ But I wanted to be inside of Bella more. In the water, all slippery and soft and warm and… _inside her._

Groanin', I pulled out of her mouth until just a strand of cum and saliva attached us. I fuckin' groaned again when she used one finger to sweep up the wet thread and smear it all around my throbbing dick until it twitched like a wild beast in her hand.

Grabbin' her hands, I pulled her up. Into the water, the muddy-sandy bottom formed over our feet.

"I'm getting all wet!" Bella gasped.

"Gonna get a lot wetter."

Trapped in the sheet, she quickly became drenched. The cotton clung to every round curve and luscious line of her temptin' body. I cocked my head and watched the cool water lappin' up from her legs to her hips to her tits. _Fuck, her nipples._

I pulled the sheet away, slowly unwrappin' her until it floated on the surface before sinkin' down in waves to settle on the bottom.

Wet, sinuous, _strong and needing. _

I had to be in her.

I had to _be_ in Bella.

Her legs around my waist, her pussy right there, right on top of me. I took a deep breath but that didn't help me calm the fuck down. I used one hand to stroke her, open her. She gasped, fastenin' her legs tighter, and guided the swollen head of my cock into her.

She sighed and stopped. Her hot channel just graspin' my tip, sendin' shudders up and down my body. I lunged up with a shout, "Oh YEAH!" to her scream muffled against my shoulder, her tongue whipping out to trace the thick bands of muscle.

My forearms clenched, my hips thrust, my cock flew in and out of her.

She rocked back and her hair dangled in the water, her face a sexual picture of pleasure. Every time I entered her, her toes pressed into my ass, and she whimpered, "_Ah-ah-_ah!"

We were entirely wet, top to bottom, inside her and out. Slippery. Wicked. _Wanton_.

She was rollin' her hips so the pressure of my pelvis and my hair rubbed against her hot little clit. I angled closer and ground slowly over her until I could feel the fiery grip of her cunt pulsing and pushin' and kneadin' my cock.

Arms around my neck, hands grippin' my shoulders, legs slappin' against my thighs, mouth to my throat, my ears, my lips, Bella quivered, chanted, "Please, please, _please more._"

I was rougher then, because more and fucking _more_ would never be enough with her.

Just a few more… _oh fuck fuck FUCK!_ I held her on top of me, the water up to my hips. I pounded once more, bringin' her down on me hard, her fluttering grip swallowing the jets and jets and streams of cum that blew out of me and into her. _Fucking into her._

And later, in my bed, we just watched each other. Then it was slow. Just, _yeah_, bein' together again. On my knees over her, touchin' each other everywhere. I pulled her up into my lap and made love to her until a fuckin' gorgeous sheen of sweet made her all glisteny and her breathy moans filled my head with the most goddamn delicate sex sounds.

Her arms around me, her tits against me, her hips rockin' with mine, the slide of her soft legs against the rasp of mine. And at the end, my hands on her bottom and our eyes sluggish with sensuality, we held on tight, cumming with the quietest groans and 'I love you so much.'

After layin' next to each other for awhile with our legs tangled and the beddin' in a shambles around us, Bella propped up on my chest with a sly smile. "I feel like gettin' some barbeque."

"Didn't you get enough of smellin' that shit at Mepkin Abbey?"

"That wasn't barbeque, that was vampire-on-a-spit. Besides, Big Daddy's is 'home of the best racks in town'."

I cupped her tits, "Don't think so, you got the best rack."

"Hooters?"

"All's they got is scrawny wings, and I repeat, your hooters are far superior."

"What about Bob's then? 'No one beats Bob's meat'."

I raised an eyebrow.

"What? It's the slogan for the restaurant!"

I lifted my other eyebrow, and my dick stood up straighter, too.

"Fine." She licked her lips and whispered breathily, "_Can't beat Eddie's meat_."

"Better. Yeah, I'm thinkin' that's an awesome name for an all-you-can-eat." I knocked her elbows out from under her so she sprawled on top of me, her tits tumblin' onto my chest.

Huffing her hair out of her eyes, she looked at me. "So long as I'm the only one to get a mouthful of you."

All relaxed, I folded my arms behind my head. "Like a little south in your mouth, do ya?"

Her eyes widened, "Why, Eddie. Did you just say _little_?" She wiggled against my growing boner.

"Maybe we could just hunt," I suggested. Because I was horny again, and that shit was hot.

"No chance."

"C'mon, you kill it, I'll cook it." I inveigled.

"Uh, I had your cupcakes, remember?"

I pulled her hand to my balls. "You sure did, and you weren't complanin' about them at the time… matter of fact, you couldn't get enough of 'em, I seem to-"

Squeezing up the length of my shaft, Bella effectively shut me up but for a moan, "_Ah, fuck… I seem to recall_."

_~~ll~~_

Well, I might go out and buy that reeking barbeque shit for her—she was my gal, you know?—didn't mean I had to stick around and watch her eat it.

I was squattin' down next to The Bronco, changin' out the tires that had gone bald what with all the drivin' I'd been doin' around EBF. Hot as sin outside, I'd left my t-shirt hangin' off the porch railing like a flag. I heard the crunch of her sandals on the gravel behind me. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could picture those heels perfectly… _the gold ones with ribbons that wrapped around her ankles._

I didn't turn around, but I hummed low in my throat.

I felt her hand run down my back, sweepin' from one side to the other over the muscles bunching as I continued to work. Her fingertips snuck into my low waistband, gave a little yank. I wiped my sweatless brow with the back of my arm, my cock punching inside my jeans. A growl grumblin' from my chest.

"You say somethin', baby?" She asked. The swish of her skirt brushed down my back as she crouched behind me.

I shook my head.

Her hands skimmed over my shoulders all the way to my wrists that had stilled on the lugnuts, on account of my own nuts becoming heavy with the need to fuck. "You need a hand?"

Turning my head finally, I captured her lips, jerked her closer. "That a trick question?"

She shook her head.

"You talkin' about my truck or my cock?" I nipped on her neck until I reached the delicious hollow of her collar bone.

"Depends what you need a hand with," she sighed.

"Now that even a question at all, is it?"

I gave _her_ a hand instead, helpin' her up. Leaning against the truck I took in her dress. _Yes, fuck. The Yellow Dress._ I flipped up her skirt and watched it glide back down over her thighs. "You know I like this thing." I'd had it dry cleaned for her when she was in Italy… fuckin' Clinton coulda learned a thing or two from me.

She twirled for me until I caught her around the waist and spun her into me. "I wore it for you."

I nodded, smilin'. I ran my fingers through her loose hair, watchin' the sun filter amidst the silky strands.

"I was thinkin', Eddie, bout a name for my taxidermy shop."

"_Mmmm?_"

"How about 'Skinnin' N Grinnin': Makin' memories last a lifetime'?"

I laughed. "Yeah, I like it. Just add 'Sinnin' to it, be perfect for you."

We were holding hands and talkin', stealing kisses and laughin' when Bella looked down the drive. "Party's starting."

All along the road and all the way down the drive, a calvalcade was comin'. Dust smoked like wildfires under the giant tires of pick-ups. Wolfmobiles I and II were playin' chicken, dangerously ramming into each other, makin' dents, and _goddamn_ if those fool wolves weren't just hangin' on at the back of W-II, holdin' onto the chains and leashes and nothin' else.

The dusk's humid haze made everythin' and everyone some sort of mystical mirage that multiplied as the cars and trucks pulled up and parked. The crickets' annoying chatter was defeated by shouts and so many _Hell-Yes_ rebel hollers.

Hell, even the neighbors showed; Miss Delia with her passel of kids, Penske-Texas—no longer the same ornery pissant since L'isiana moved out-and fuck if M'Esme hadn't invited the McClellanville Cousins!

Carl and Maw came with their car loaded down. Maw had platters of who-the-hell-knew-what, and the wolfpack descended upon her. Carl shouted, "Someone order blood?" before throwing a boat cooler packed full of sanguine goodness at Bubba, who caught it with no problem at all. Unfuckin'-fortunately, he was surrounded by a bunch of unsuspectin' humans which was a big ol' _whoops_. He shifted the cooler in his arms, pretending it was heavy, and explained, "Uh, just Bloody Mary's, y'all."

When I threw my hands up in exasperation, he hastily amended, "But it's real strong folks, y'all best stickin' to the hooch over thataway."

Jizz and Alice sauntered over from next door; she with her tattered parasol, him with his easygoin' smile and bowlegged gait. Her hand was tucked into his elbow as he squired her from one group to the next.

The El Camino turned down the lane. Bubba got to Rose just as she was backin' up beside his bright blue monster truck. Opening the door, he let her out. Theirs was a quiet greetin'. Bubba kissed her cheek and asked, "You doin' okay?"

Hillbilly Black headed over with loose-lipped Leah, and I knew I needed to skedaddle right outta there. Fuck, I was already afire over Bella and The Yellow Dress, I didn't need no one else rufflin' my feathers. "Gonna go put on a clean shirt, darlin'," I made my excuses to Bella.

I'd just changed and come out into the livin' room to find the Mustachio'd Mensch waitin' on me. Shoulda figured I hadn't seen the last of him, seein' as he was Bella's dad, but I hoped he didn't have plans to take any more pot shots at me this time.

"Aw shit," I cursed. "I mean, evenin', Sir." _Sir Sheriff of the Shitbrown Eyes. _

"Eddie, I'll let that one slide this time." _Huh? Just who the hell could hear my thoughts round here. I was supposed to be the mindreader!_

He held out his hand.

I gave it wide berth.

He didn't lower it.

I met his palm.

He gripped me _real_ tight. I gripped _harder_, almost to the point of hearin' his bones pop, but still Poppa Po-Po Chief of the Podunk didn't give. His eyes were bulgin' though, and that made me happy.

Finally, I relented.

We both swiped our palms on our thighs.

We both stopped.

"So," I said. '_Cause that was a real icebreaker._

He cleared his throat. Cleared it again. Said some words that made it seem he was hockin' up a big loogie, "You done good, Son."

I almost reeled backwards, like that time Bella shot me. "Say again?"

He clapped me on the shoulder, and I could tell he wanted to try to hurt me, and that he also wanted to tell me somethin'. "You took care of my little girl."

His eyes shifted aside, but not before I saw the skein of wetness filling them. "Yup. Man of your word, Eddie."

"Uh, thanks Sheriff Swan." I decided to take off my baseball cap then, nervously running my fingers through my hair, tryin' to make myself seem acceptable to the father of the woman I loved.

He ducked his head and started to leave, but I stopped him. "While you're here, I got somethin' I wanted to ask you."

"Shoot."

_I hoped he didn't mean that literally…_

When we went back outside, the hootenanny was in full, furious swing. It was a damned revelry! Bottles were clankin' to shouts of, 'To Mama! _To Mama!_'

People were dancing. Fires were blazin', though not too close to the vampires. Spliffs were smokin', though not too near the 'adults', even though I saw M'Esme and Carl tiptoe off to the outbuildin' to bake one up, their heads bent together, their arms linked around each other.

And that looked like a good idea, gettin' off alone for a little while.

Weaving through the partiers, I found Bella talkin' with Jacob. I braided our fingers together and lead her away. "Sneak out back with me. Got somethin' to show you."

She placed her beer on a stump we passed along the way. "You already done showed me _that_ five times today. You really did miss me, didn't ya?."

"You don't know the half of it," I replied, haulin' her as close to me as she could get.

"Oh, really? I think I know _all of it_. The long and thick beauty of _it._"

I laughed nervously, tempting her deeper into the woods. "Not talkin' about my cock, Bella."

Once I got her well away from the trailer, I felt even more anxious and _fuck_, even… bashful. I was glad I'd left my cap back in the double wide so I didn't have to take it off again…one less thing to worry about.

_Damn._ I met her eyes and pulled my hand from hers. This wasn't how I'd imagined my life. Not ever. Just that first friggin' fateful day I'd seen her waitressing at Mama Brown's… that's all it had taken.

As I got down on one knee, I folded my fingers on top of my bent thigh. I watched understanding dawn in the expression of her face as her lips tilted into the smile I loved, and the smallest tears rained like clear rivulets down her cheeks.

"Please don't cry, Bella."

She gulped and nodded and kept smilin' and kept cryin'.

The stars' light studded off her skin, making her glow.

_This might not have been how I imagined my life, but I wouldn't have changed one damn thing about it. _

"You know I love you."

She reached over, her fingers slight and shaky against my face. "I do."

I presented a ring to her. It was just a simple affair, one diamond, not too big. It sat in the palm of my hand, like my heart and my world and _every fuckin' thing_ that was good in my life sat in the palm of her hand. My voice was low but she heard me clearly when I asked, "Bella Swan, will you marry me?"

She was laughing and crying and down in front of me, her thumb tracing my mouth, tracing my smile, "Yes_, of course._ _Yes_, Eddie Cullen, I'd love nothin' better. _Yes!_"

I barely had time to slip the ring onto her finger before she was in my arms. Our kiss was the same as ever—filled with desire and shockingly hot and sexy—and it was completely fuckin' new. Long and wonderful and intense and… _lovin'… _

Far away, we could still see the fog lights from the 4 x 4s turned on like makeshift party lanterns. We could hear the faint call of the hubbub, a keg cracked, a flock of laughter, a convergence of voices.

That was all background noise.

There was nothin' else.

Just me and Bella.

And these words:

"Always?"

"_You best believe it."_

Usually I sign off with 'Fin'. But this is Dead Confederates, ain't it? Eddie's got this one.

_~The Fuckin' End~_

* * *

~Review! If you've ever wanted to, or you're just tuning in because it's _finally_ complete…now's the time. I'd love to hear what you thought of it all, especially that ending~

**A pretty epic, poignant quote from my lovely friend and beta, Viola Cornuta (because I do believe she likes to make me cry):**

Charles Dickens-_ 'It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.'_

**Chapter Notes:**

**Mama Brown's Gullah Prayer:**

_And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us_

www . marysrosaries . com / collaboration/index . php?title=Gullah_Rosary_Prayers#Glory_Be_to_the_Father_.2F_Gloria_Patri

And yes, Eddie did ask Charlie for Bella's hand in marriage back there in the trailer ;).

**Epilogues?**

Um, I have in mind something, but it's not even really a chapter…it's just funny, at least to me and some others. So you can keep an eye out if you like. For a laugh .

**My gameplan?**

Many of you know I'm always writing my real stuff as well as fanfiction. I am _this_ close to finishing a novel! I am _that_ close to getting ready to go through and sort out the rough draft of another. I fully intend to use the rest of the summer to get my ass completely into the world of writing for profit ;). It's incredibly exciting and also goddamn nerve wracking to try to learn the ins and outs and yes and no of getting published, so I'll be concentrating on that for a bit.

**Fanfic**: I'm going to let the ideas brew. I gotta admit, if there's one story I will work really hard to continue it's DC's, okay? As you've read, the storyline for the sequel has already been introduced. Simply because life with no Eddie and the DW crew? Major nut-suckage for me, personally (not that I have nuts, but you know…). I have a few other o/s ideas—some are _Game of Thrones _related (OMG, those books! And…Khal Drogo, am I right? Holy FUCK ME!). I'm not making any promises, but I'm pretty sure the ff writing bug is gonna bite me again sooner rather than later…it's such a fantastic, instant release (that's what Eddie said ;)).

So, make sure to alert me.

Cheers so very much, I love you ladies!

xoxo,

Rie~


	37. Super Fab Update

**I JUST SOLD MY FIRST NOVEL SUGAR DADDY TO LYRICAL PRESS!  
**

It's a contemporary romance with heat, heart, and humor…set right here in the Lowcountry y'all have become familiar with through Dead Confederates.

**Here's a peek!**

Shay Greer is a GRITS girl—a Girl Raised In The South—not an It Girl and nowhere near a demure southern belle. She's looking for a way out of her broken down marriage when she lands an unexpected job offer she really should refuse. Position? _Mistress._ Fringe Benefits? _Of course._ Fraternization with sexy CEO Reardon Boone? _Required. _

So, y'all, I'm dancing a two-step while slopping champagne all over the DW carpets—

What's that? Oh, _oh. _Yeah, sorry, Eddie, I meant the 'champagne of beers', 'course!

Best place to find out what's up and when it's coming out, or just to hang and shoot the breeze with me is at facebook. Live link is on my profile, or this'n right here without the spaces—you know the deal ;): www . facebook RieWarren

**~~Thanks to everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, and being the most amazing folks in the fandom!~**


	38. Unholy Matrimony

***Hey, y'all! Long time, no see, I know, I know! I've been super busy as you're about to find out. I wrote this Dead Confederates shotgun wedding to celebrate the release of my debut novel, _Sugar Daddy_, a sizzling summer romance! It was fun—and a little disturbing considering how easy it was—to step back into Eddie's head again. I hope you all enjoy! So, this isn't goodbye, it's a _Hell Yeah _rebel yell, and a thank you for the many years of support and amazing friendship ***

_**Sugar Daddy, **_**by Rie Warren**_**:**_

_She needs a job. He wants a mistress. Hearts and contracts are bound to get broken._

Shay Greer is pure GRITS—a Girl Raised In The South–but nowhere near a demure southern belle. She's looking for a way out of her broken down marriage when she lands an unexpected job offer she really should refuse. Position? _Mistress_. Fringe Benefits? _Of course_. Fraternization with sexy CEO Reardon Boone? _Required_.

You can find _Sugar Daddy_ at all ebook retailers—Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo…you name it! The live links for everything, and how to reach me, are on my ffnet profile ;)

**Songs used for this chapter:**

**Florida Georgia Line: **_**Cruise Song**_

**Jesse James: **_**Do it Like a Dude**_

**Iron and Wine: **_**Flightless Bird, American Mouth**_

* * *

******Dead Confederates: Unholy Matrimony**

_~~If God had a refrigerator, would your picture would be on it~~_

I fuckin' hoped not. The latest church sign on Whipple Road stuck in my craw. I wasn't MIA from the local weekly prayer meeting. I was permanently AWOL, because I took my sinning very seriously. And speaking of refrigerators, it was bad enough Bella had dragged me to the Best Buy all the way up Rivers Ave to purchase a clean-air, quiet-sound fridge, with an ice shooter.

S'if I didn't shoot enough _ice_ to keep her cool inside and out every friggin' day.

The A/C window units had conked out in the double wide, too. No big. Except it meant Bubba was here, and he seemed to have no intentions of cuttin' bait after helping me replace them with newer models. He and Bella were teamed up at the off-kilter kitchen table over a platter of Bob's barbeque he'd happily upchuck later since he couldn't digest it. _Asswad._

I hated seeing my girl chum up to the ugly lug almost as much as I loved her bein' so tight with my family.

_Suck it up or suck shit, _I could hear Maw saying one of her time-honored, off-color southern gospels.

Heaving myself into a chair, I decided to suck it up. Trying not to pay too much attention to Bella's pouty mouth or the titter of her laughter that made me wanna go after her that much faster. I wound my fingers through my hair, yanking on it instead of hauling her onto my lap.

Bubba spun his chair back to front and his cap front to back. "All that work today started me thinkin', y'all, and I got this idea for a Company."

Bella leaned forward, I rolled my shoulders back. Last time he verbally capitalized Company and Plan, we were 100K short on our investment in the wood chopping industry.

"Air conditionin' repair. Wanna know the name?" Emmett rocked forward.

_Not really._

"Breaking Wind!"

I stalked to the new, streamlined super-shiny fridge and pulled out a brew. Bella held her hand back for a can of her own. There was only one cold cannon I wanted to place in her palm, but I held myself in check, _again._

The table topsy-turvied when I sat down, probably care of my hard dick.

The dogs had their Junk Removal + Pine Straw biz. Bella was working the taxidermy shit. Rosie had added a drive-thru window to Mama Brown's . . . Suddenly everyone was an entrepreneur and I just wanted to get laid.

I'd asked Bella to marry me a month ago, the minute she came back from Volterra. After Bella'd skipped out (to save my entire family) and returned (with a battle royale) I hadn't let up. She'd said yes, but the planning was still in the making. And I was making to get pissed off.

She crossed her legs, listening to Bubba go on about conductors and shafts. _Hell, I have a shaft that needs conductin'_.

Her cheeks flushed as my hand moved up her knee to her inner thigh. I loved watching her. Almost as much as doing her so hard the mattress needed to be replaced. I kissed her neck, my hand gliding higher.

"Rosie's closin' up soon, right?" I slanted a not-so-subtle look at Emmett. He detached his Kindle from Bella's bogarted powercord and stuffed the reader into the bib of his overalls before he squinted at the clock. "'Bout now."

Bella stood, opening the door and shooing him outside. "See you in the mornin'."

_And not one second sooner. _

After the door banged shut, Bella sauntered to me. Hips rolling, lip licking, in charge and not afraid of me at all.

Her clothes dropped. My breath rasped in and out.

Bella had other plans, too, besides our unholy matrimony. The headstrong, hot, and horny woman knew the direct path to my heart and my cock. She swiveled on her heels and headed off down the doublewide's hallway.

I full-throttled in front of her, nothing but a blur. By the time she got to our bedroom where my upright piano was stationed against one wall—almost shouting _Great Balls of Fire_—and her sandals, high heels, and dresses drizzled out of the closet in a tempting display, I had my shirt open, my jeans unbuttoned as I reclined on the bed.

Queen-sized.

Ruby-tipped tits swayed in my vision. Her pussy slick with wet heat deviled my brain. Her voice, low and honey-filled, swam about my head and my cock ached when she ordered, "Stay still for me, babe."

Lights off, curtains open, the room filled with the moon's silver ray's washing over her lithe body and teardrop breasts. Breasts she cupped as she approached. I groped the bedding beneath me instead of her, shredding through the quilt, hitting the mattress, tearing it open.

She tsked, "Gonna have to buy another one, Eddie?'

I nodded in time with her juggling tits, grunting as she brought one engorged nipple to my mouth. Groaning low in my chest, I pulled the pink button between my lips, drawing hard. I wanted to mash her tits together and feast off both at the same time.

Laying her hands on my shoulders, Bella skimmed the shirt down my arms, off my hands. She dragged her fingertips along the tensed muscles of my abdomen, shifting one globed breast and tight nip for the other, letting me tongue lash her until she threw her head back, her hair shivering all over my torso.

My hips thrust up and I used the teasing licks on her tits to bring her down on top of me. _Hell yeah._ Soft belly, slim waist, hot tits, wet mouth finding mine. Our tongues swirled, lunged. I was about ready to throw her beneath me and feed my cock into her cunt when she crawled backward.

"I said be still."

_Goddamn._

She ripped off my jeans and I growled at her. She snarled in return, and damn if that didn't make me wanna tear up the whole house fucking her hard enough to make her scream so loud the entire neighborhood at Luxury Hollows would hear her.

The only bad thing about turning Bella was the novel fact she was at least as strong as me, and a total sexy vixen when she wanted to use that power. As she did now. I bit off my complaints because my girl was horny as hell and getting ready to take me on a ride the likes of which I'd never been on. I could tell from her deep brown dilated eyes, the rapid rise and fall of her tits, the way her gaze worked all over my hard body, my flexing muscles, my rigid erection like she wanted to taste everything at once.

"Yes, ma'am." I crossed my hands behind my head.

"Open your thighs, babe."

Spreading my legs, I watched her eyes take in my cock that speared up over my stomach, a spread of pre-come shimmering from the head and down my shaft. Her dark lashes fell, gaze lowering between my thighs, landing on my balls. She licked her lips and let out a little whimper, surveying the full round weights. If she'd touched me then I'd have shot off like a bottle rocket.

"Good boy," she smiled.

_The fuck if I'm gonna be a dog and _woof,_ but if she keeps starin' at me like that, rollin' over and beggin' for a fuck ain't too far off the mark._

"Bella." My timbre was injected with want, with need, with the pain of arousal.

She slid between my thighs, hitching her knees over me.

"_Fuuck_."

Her breath touched me first. Then her tongue. She curled it wickedly up my pulsing meat. "You like?"

_Christ, yeah._

She thwapped my cock against my stomach, a strand of ejaculate hitting her lips. My cock on fire from the inside out, it leapt to her mouth. My fingers closed around the base so I could lay the firm tip against her closed lips.

"Gonna hurt me, Bella?" Venom leaked into my mouth.

Watching between my legs, she sucked my balls—one then the other—into her mouth. Dark with desire, my sacs fell from her lips. "Gonna suck you."

Her tongue rode up my ridged length to the broad head she took into her mouth. Powerful suction ate at my flesh. I cranked forward, crying out. I curled my fists into her hair and let her play. Bella jacked me off, smiling all the goddamn while. She lapped my dick like it was a swizzle stick.

My abs jumped with every fucking lick bestowed.

I shouted when she let up on the vacuum suck and tasted her lips again. "Then I'm gonna fuck you."

Bella dove down, pressed her tits against my testes. Her nipples teased me. She rode both berry points up and down me, her tongue in hot pursuit. The sucking went on until I was covered in sweat, the bed was a mess, and my cock gleamed from her spit.

I jerked her head back. My cock was at the entrance of her mouth and I'd never needed to shoot so bad. "You want more?"

Breaking from my hold, Bella slipped down the side of my throbbing shaft, nibbling, her tongue wrapping around me. "I need it."

I grabbed her hair again, and lowered her open mouth onto me.

When Bella pulled off, her mouth was puffy from use. She prowled across my body.

"Get on my cock, darlin'." I ordered in a low, controlled voice.

My hips lifted off the bed as she prowled across my body. I growled at the slick slide of her cunt over me. Labia parting, wet pussy clasping as each inch rocked inside of her. Hands on her ass, I drove Bella onto me showing no mercy whatso-fuckin'-ever.

A silvery shimmer of woman on top of me, she danced on my dick, whispering, "Fuck, Eddie!"

I dropped her down fast, my cock so engorged I cruelly fucked her. "Too hard?" My teeth dug into her neck.

A long moan escaped her mouth as she creamed around me.

I wanted the goddamn visual. I wanted her pussy, her mouth. Her T & A. I wanted to watch her take my cock. Hands beneath Bella's thighs, I whipped her around. Her palms curled under my calves. I punched into her, demanding, "Fuck me hard."

I grabbed her hair to pull her head toward me and spanked her ass, chuckling low and gritty when Bella tore at my mouth. "You slap me one more time-"

My fingers drilled against her clit and she shook on top of me. A flood of her come covered my cock when she clamped down. Back bowed, body tight, Bella climaxed so fucking hard she nearly ripped my dick off.

"Fuck." I sped through her orgasm, grasping her hips and pounding through the insane pulses speeding come from my balls to my cock and out the head.

Spinning Bella around and beneath me, I kept thrusting into her. She came again, writhing under me. She hummed and smiled when I finally finished, stretching her arms over her head. The throbbing artery in her neck pound-pound-pounded.

I took a small drink from her vein, reinvigorating. _Fuck Gatorade._ Closing the suck-bite, I fell back to the bed, the mattress half on the floor.

Arms, legs, tits, ass. Bella rolled against me. Boobs, brains, and sass. Too much sass.

_Damn. I'm a goner. _

"Did I hurt you?"

Throwing a sheet around us, she cuddled close. "Never."

I nodded to myself and held her nearer. My toes curled with hers, my mouth at her ear.

Bella was the shit. My broad. My babe. But not enough. "You _'_bout ready to marry me yet?"

"Might-could be." She peered up at me with an unfathomable expression. "You done sowin' your wild oats?"

"Darlin', I haven't looked at another woman or wanted anyone else since the moment I saw you at Mama Brown's with a pencil in your hair and no-nonsense on your lips." Not to mention the short jean skirt, halter top, and _come-fuck-me_ walk. "I love you, Bella."

Warm and soft, she cuddled against me, sighing against my jaw before sliding her lips across mine. When her hand pressed against my heart, I could almost feel it beating . . . for her.

_~~ll~~_

I'd finally gotten Bella to agree to a date, and goddamn if that didn't make the ache in my chest finally subside, once and for all. I was still dead set on running away with her to Louisiana though, so when Maw had mentioned our nuptials taking place at Wide Awake Plantation—looking all wide-eyed and fanciful—I didn't hesitate to shoot that shit right down.

She'd tried to steamroll over me while we sat on the glossy black joggling board outside her and Carl's house on the bluff. "But that's where that lovely Reese Witherspoon got married to Ryan Philippe, Eddie."

The creek had shushed behind us, probably full of laughing alligators that kept eluding my clutches. "Yeah, and look how fuckin' well that worked out for 'em." I'd snorted.

Esme had wacked me upside the head with no warning. "Mind that tongue of yours before I pull it out and add it to my next batch of mincemeat pies for the Sunday bake sale at church."

I needed my tongue intact so I could eat Bella out often, and at my leisure, so I dropped the cussing, but I still groused. "'Sides, Wide Awake, Maw? I don't need any more reminders about bein' eternally unable to sleep, do I?"

The hard line of her lips softened as she scrutinized me, appreciative I'd worn clean jeans and an un-ripped t-shirt to the homestead for the Sunday dinners she made us all attend so we could sit around the table while she fed Bella—and sometimes her damn daddy—the fried chicken my half-vamp woman still craved.

Maw had wrapped her arms around me and tipped her head back to smile up at me. "I don't suppose you do, son. We'll take Wide Awake Plantation off the table—there's always Emmett and Rosie—but I still need to talk to Bella about…"

Having gotten my way, I'd tuned Maw out with a kiss to her cheek, one that would've made her blush had any blood coursed through her veins, and ambled off the down the dirt drive in search of a John Deere I could hotwire. Jizz and Bubba had already trailblazed into the bush on the Kubota, and I had mind to racing the tractors while our women made plans we'd have to unravel later.

Now, several days after putting M'Esme off the wedding-at-Wide-Awake trail, I was changing the tires on the Bronco, back at Luxury Hollows.

On all our 4x4's, Rosie's El Camino, and M'Esme's vintage Mercedes we honored Mama Brown with a decal I never failed to brush my fingers across. _In Loving Memory of Eunice Brown. June 20, 1951-September 13, 2009._

Bella came out to help, _unhelpfully_ wearing a half shirt showing off the half-moons of her breasts and cut-offs glimpsing off the bottom crescents of her ass when she bent over. Bare foot too, one of my favorite looks on her, unless she was modeling super-sexy, super high heels that made her legs look a mile long . . . while otherwise naked.

The breathing room in my jeans getting sucked up by the size of my cock rigid enough to stab through fabric, I popped the top bottom. Bella's eyes clung to the curls above the base of my shaft. I slid my thumbs into the waistband, pressing the jeans a little lower on my hips.

Bella lifted her eyes to mine.

I raised an eyebrow and cocked my leg, drawing her gaze back to my erection. "See somethin' you like?" I asked, making sure I took my time one-handing the t-shirt from my back and over my head.

Her tongue traipsed out to wet her lips and I stepped up to her. The muscles of my bare chest pushed against the straining buds of her nipples.

Bella dragged in a breath then darted a glimpse of those gorgeous brown eyes over my shoulder. "Yeah. I'd like to get the tires done on my truck too before those storm clouds over yonder burst all over us."

I laughed long and low. "Only one thing you gotta worry about burstin' all over you, darlin'."

"That so?"

_Damn straight. _I was frisky. It didn't matter I'd made her scream my name from the porch couch with my face between her legs not two hours earlier.

Slinging an arm around Bella's waist, sliding my hand down to cup her bottom, I whispered against her lips, "Gimme a kiss."

Bella slammed me against the Bronco, my wrists gripped in her hands. Her body undulated against mine causing a whole lotta heat to head south to my cock. I loved the passionate power of her moves, the wet silken thrust of her tongue fucking in and out of my mouth.

I loved the bite of her teeth against my bottom lip and the fact she could do more than handle me; she could take me, fuck me, suck me any time she wanted. And she knew it.

Just not right then. Because the Bronco skittered back about five feet and the wheel we'd been monkeyin' around with popped off and rolled several yards before upending.

We broke apart and laughed, grabbing each other to keep from flailing backward on our asses.

"Back to work?" Bella grinned, arms looped around my neck.

"Back to work." I swatted her ass for good measure and to cop an extra feel.

We took turns lifting the body of the Bronco and replacing the tires, working up a sweaty sheen under the blazing Indian summer, South Carolina sun.

She had a wrench in her hand and a lug nut in her mouth and my balls in a vice when I asked, "So, we're elopin', right?"

Bella spat the metal into her palm. "No."

"But what about God 'n' Guns? Louisiana?" I squatted beside her, taking the wrench from her hand. "If we're gonna have a shotgun weddin', shouldn't we do it where ammo's allowed at the nuptials?"

Bella stood, shaking her hair out. The sun-saturated lengths flew against my shoulders when I rose to my feet in front of her. She took my palms and placed them on the truck door. I was positioned the same way I'd been earlier, her breasts against me, her breath a trail of fire against my throat.

My skin tingled when she exhaled softly, "No."

"No?"

"We got three weeks to plan it, baby."

_Only thing I'm plannin' is how to get inside her pants right the fuck now._

"And we're only gettin' married once." Bella's fingers scorched inside the front pockets of my jeans, lowering them with a shift-shift until my broad cockhead broke free of denim. "White wedding. The bluff. Bouquets and all that stuff."

Pulling her top over her tits, I licked from one orb to the other. "Flowers?" My palm skimmed inside her shorts, sending shockwaves down her spine.

"Tons of . . . red . . . hot . . . pokers . . ."

Every word she said was a swivel of her wet cunt against my fingers and a shuttle of her fist from the base of my shaft to the helmet.

Bella's eyes held mine to the last second when her twisting, gripping, squeezing hand drew the come from my balls and out my cock and all over her wrist. She rippled around my fingers, tightening and releasing as a spiraling orgasm made her fall against me with wild wails and the arch of her hips.

Ropes of my seed decorated her body. _Gotta love that._

Bella glanced down over herself. "This isn't what I have in mind for a white weddin', Eddie."

Nevertheless she gathered drops of come from between her boobs and placed it into her mouth. She licked from my fingers and dropped low to suckle my cock and clean my abs from where I'd exploded.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, Bella. You tryin' to kill me?" I was hard again already.

She rode against the length of my thigh, laughing all the way. "Y'all'd be dead by now if I was."

_Hardcore._

Lifting her in my arms, I carried her into the DW. To hell with the trucks, the tires, and Maw digging her talons in over the wedding. I set Bella down, arranged myself beside her in bed, and tucked her against my shoulder.

"One more thing."

_I love her one more things. It's usually 'let's fuck like this, baby'._

"Sex is off-limits until we tie the knot," she said.

_The Fuck?_

_~~ll~~_

_~~Make your mother happy happy happy! And go to church Jack~~_

I reckoned The Southern Belle counted as close to God and Church as we'd get. For sure there'd be some babes on their knees, if nothing else.

Three frigging weeks. And it weren't bad enough Bella had added the no-sex no-way no-how rule to getting hitched. She'd hit me with the 'don't even think about jackin' it either' clause, too.

In Jasper's classic Ford truck on the way to the Belle, we idled in the L'il Cricket parking lot while Bubba mooned out the side window. Gobbing brown baccy juice into an empty, Jizz lobbed it out the window on a three-point arc.

A carload of cougars drove past, did a U-ey, and made a return eye-fuck visit.

'_Course they did._

Bubba hauled up his jeans and jerked open the door. At the same time Fart Boy belched, "Ew, bet that left tracks."

Emmett's eyes danced. He'd obviously concealed the Fart Boy pull-tab toy somewhere, probably in his hairy ass-crack. "Just gotta run in and pick up some Goodie's Powders. Y'all need anything?"

_Fuck's sake. Stuck with the only hypochondriac vampire in existence. _

"Newspaper an' toothpicks." Jasper drawled.

I slapped the side of the Ford. "Better grab a two-liter of Sunkist for Carl."

"Contraband hooch?" Jizz questioned, one blond eyebrow rolling up.

"My fuckin' wedding, I can do what I want."

Two miles later, three irascible vampires eschewing the valet fucking service at the stripjoint, we bared our teeth, placed some cash, and had us front row seats at the Belle.

Drinks took up the tabletop—whiskey, beer, shots. Perfect.

Bubba shoved a few glasses aside and slammed his hand down on the table. I watched beer spill. Jizz leaned over to suck up some beer foam. Bubba lifted his hand, leaving a pointer finger splatted against a scrunched up piece of paper.

"I'm officiatin'!"

I snaked the paper from beneath his hamfist, narrowin' my eyes. _Jesus Christ._ Emmett Dale McCarty Cullen had gotten hisself certified online, to officiate legally. From the Gracious Shepherd Bible College, '_Fully Accredited, Costs Less, Requires No Gen-Ed Courses'_.

If I'd been paying a lick of attention to Bubba's thoughts, this'd come as no surprise. As it was, I'd learned to tune him and his hillbilly, mind-numbingly boring bullshit from my mind-reading radar years ago.

"You think I need a dog-collar, like them reverends wear?" He hooked a finger into the neck of his shirt.

Folding the verified certificate, I placed it into his shirt pocket. "You are not fuckin' marryin' me and Bella."

"Why the hell not?"

"'Cause I says so." I was fixing to officiate the ignoramus with my fist on his thick skull.

In response he took pouting to never seen before proportions. Like his bottom lip was swelling from a shellfish allergy. Who the fuck knew with him.

"I'll ask Bella." He sulked.

"Y'all do that." I swallowed three fingers of rotgut whiskey.

I was tied in knots, my balls blue. Possibly some obscene shade of violet at this point. Three weeks, no sex. Fuckin' A. Hard as a rock because Bella wouldn't give me any, like she was gonna regrow her hymen or somethin'. But it was marriage, and we were gonna do it right. _Do the right thing._ An idea I hadn't even considered before she exploded into my life.

I ignored the babes on stage, staring into my glass. I rubbed my chest. _One more night and she's mine._

Bubba broke into my doldrums, reaching across the table to snatch Jizz's box of Stim-U-Dents. He shook the contents out into his hand, laughing and rearing back when Jasper took a swipe at him. Then he propped two of the toothpicks under his upper lips over his canines.

"Don't know about you dudes, but I still feel kinda gypped about the lack of fangs." His speech came out slurred and lispy.

After looking around the joint, I rolled my eyes back to him. "Man, you can kill with your bare hands without even breakin' a sweat, fuck like a rockstar, live forever. You really think you got somethin' to complain about?"

He nodded, pressing the tip of his tongue to one of the wooden points jutting from his mouth.

"Lose _'_em before you scare the natives." _By actin' like a dipshit. _

Jasper had scooped the rest of the toothpicks back into the box, muttering about germs, but he glanced over. "Shoot. I reckon if a pair of necrotic zombies runnin' around the lowcountry, werewolves howlin' at-"

"Loup-garu," I cut in.

Pointing a toothpick at me before popping it between his lips, he said, "Semantics, Eddie boy. _Loup-garu_ roamin' around, plus whatever the hells Bells is-"

"Liger," Bubba affirmed.

Jizz crossed his arms over his chest while I fistbumped Buckwheat. "Right, a liger—half human, half vampire—if all those characters ain't fazed the air-breathers yet, a vampire with a set of false fangs ain't likely too."

He had a point, but I still needed to grumble. "The hell are we doin' here?"

The night before the wedding, I had better things to do, like polish my cock to get it ready for Bella.

"Stag party." Jizz and Bubba chorused in unison as a skimpy dressed tartlet delivered another round of brewskies and a bevy of new babes took to the stage.

_Fuckin' stag party. Stag. _I'd had one of those last night, under duress.

Bella had me a damn short leash and I wasn't even a dog. Last night I'd been jonesing for a hit of the pure stuff, her blood from the source—from her tits or those perfect ivory thighs…

But she'd had other ideas, saying, "Baby, you know can't suck without wantin' to fuck."

If I didn't love her so damn much my insides hurt as much as my iron-stiff cock, if we hadn't been through hell and back along a twisty route of deception, mayhem, and all around evil bullshit care of Arshole Aro and his assbandit flunkies, I'd have seriously considered tying her to the bed, my piano, or the Bronco and fucking her brains out _while _I sucked the hot, sweet blood from her veins.

Instead, I'd pulled away from her. Every single muscle in my body resisting. My teeth sharp, my mouth watering, my vision narrowed. Another herd of whitetail deer bit the dust last night. _And _I hadn't busted my nut, not then, not the day before that . . .

I resumed slouching in my seat, nursing _two_ cold ones, my brew and my bruised balls. At least I could get lit up at my own bachelor party.

Moments later, the crowd-going apeshit with Bubba the biggest baboon of them all-drew my attention to the spectacle on stage. I rubbed my eyes, pulled my hand over my jaw then looked back to confirm what I saw.

I leaned back in my chair, eyes glued to the trio of dancers, hand gripping _both cold ones_ hard enough to break something. The song blazing out of the sound system was dirty, gritty, filthy, and fucking hot . . . each and every one of those characteristics reflected in the sexual dance moves of the women writhing around each other on stage under the hot glowing lights.

_I can do it like a brother, do it like a dude_

_Grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you_

_Do it like a brother, do it like a dude_

_Grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you_

Do it like a dude? Jesus fuckin' Christ. She was not doin' it like a dude at all. Bella—my Bella—was all slinky, sexual, feline, and straight-up fuckable. On stage. With Rosie and Alice.

_Boom, boom, pour me a beer_

_No pretty drinks, I'm a guy out here_

_Rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' money like a pimp_

_My B-I-T-C-H is on my dick like this_

Bubba yanked open his wallet, Jasper dug out his money clip, and I sat with my mouth hanging open.

Whistles, catcalls, and men were on their feet. Human men, plebs, easily killed, all of them, but I couldn't tear my eyes away.

Dressed in the barest, sheerest bras, g-strings, and spiky heels, the three of them were total wetdream material. Never fuckin' mind my stash of girly mags that had been ripped through, thumbed through, shredded and were now no better than trailer trash toilet paper at this point . . .

My dick was gonna detonate.

Through the roaring in my ears as venom jetted through my body, I dimly heard Bubba whistling. I watched him throwing wads of cash on stage.

I almost blew my wad in my jeans when Bella ground her hips against Rosie, pulling the other vamp's long blond ponytail hard. Swear to fuck, I thought I saw a glimpse of the tips of their tongues touching, and it felt like a cattle prod zapped my cock.

_Boys, c-come say what you wanna_

_Boys, y-you need to lick my dollar_

_Boys, gettin' hot under the collar_

_Holla, holla, whoa_

The Mighty Mouseketeer and Rosie gyrated down to collect the cash, scooping it into the strings of their thongs. But Bella—fucking Bella—swiveled her ass as she swished to the stripper pole.

Then I stood up.

The flexible little minx raised one leg and winked right at me while she wound her leg _above her head_ around the floor-to-ceiling bar. The bar in my pants jerked in time to the music.

And if that bra—that _thing, _that little bitty string barely holding in her tits, shit it was no better than a pair of pasties at handling the job—came off, as it about looked to do what with evil gravity making her breasts swell, I was gonna make good on my plans to massacre every single leering motherfucker in the joint. Their randy thoughts ricocheted around my head like pinballs, lighting up violence inside me—cruel and unusual punishment on top of the fact Bella practically had my nutsack in a jar.

Bella righted herself, and her tits played nice, settling back inside the bra instead of falling out onto the floor. I narrowed my eyes when she blew me a kiss. Wrapping both legs and both arms around the pole, she slithered up it, mewing at me. When she reached the top, she arched her back, long wavy hair brushing the dimples just above her ass.

Tits thrust to the air, hips lewdly pumping, she humped the pole up and down and my dick threatened to ram through my Levi's.

Beside me Jizz was grinning, _goddamn wolf whistling._ Or who knew, maybe Leah and the pack were in the crowd and I'd get to them too. My backhand to Jasper's jaw jarred him for a minute while he worked it back into place. Hitting the jackoff had busted my knuckles but they knitted neatly back together in seconds. Too bad his toothpick was DOA.

My Pavlov cock was hard enough to use as a nightstick and I really needed to can it with the cop-talk 'cause that was putting me off my game. The game being getting Bella off center stage and onto my thighs for a private lapdance, fucking pronto.

I respected her enough to let her do her gig with the girls, but I made a massive male barrier between her, the stage, and the salivating press of gawkers.

The song finally ending, the girls giggled, blowing kisses to their fans who were one fucking come-on from getting their heads sheared off, ligament by tasty ligament. I leaped on stage, swaggering up to my girl, easily ignoring every other fucker in the place so I could focus on the way her eyes widened and her mouth pursed into a pretty gasp.

Her gaze strayed to my cock, a hard roll in my jeans, and meandered up the length of my body as I stopped inches from her.

"You pissed?" she asked.

I pushed my hand into her hair and fisted the damp tendrils. Her gasp was solely sexual. "Who were thinkin' about fucking when you were dancin' like that?"

"You." Her sharp teeth bit into the pillowy bottom lip.

My mouth cruised up her neck before I crushed my lips against hers. I tasted her tongue and dragged mine through the wet warm depths of her mouth, twisting and tearing back.

I cupped her breasts, nipples pointing into my palms. "No one sees these but me."

"I know."

With another searing kiss, I grabbed her thighs and pulled her up around my waist, covering as much of her bare skin as I could. I blasted out to the jeering throng, "She's taken. For every day of her life, for the rest of her life."

Carrying her away from the glaring lights, I asked, "What the hell are you wearin'?"

"You like it?" She wriggled free, her hands sliding up her curves hardly hidden by the bra and panties.

"Like it a whole lot better when I can get you out of it, in private, Bella." Each muscle on my body flexed in response to her tease, and menace clotted my throat.

She stepped back, "Not gonna happen tonight."

"I know." Running my hands through my hair, I clenched my fingers before I gave in to the urge to manhandle her back to the DW. "You better be at Rosie's by the time I get home. With the doors locked, the windows barred . . .

We couldn't sleep in the same house tonight. Fucking tradition.

Her face framed in my hands, I scattered light kisses over the freckles constellating over her nose, her cheeks. The widow's peak I loved, I murmured against. "And you better bring this _outfit_ on the honeymoon."

"Tomorrow." Cheeks flushed, eyes bright, hair loose, Bella was gorgeous. Happy.

_Shit. _Fingers grazing her face and down her arms, I linked our fingers for a moment. "Tomorrow."

_~~ll~~_

_~~A pure hand needs no glove to cover it~~_

_And neither does my cock._

Cacky's Bride Aid arrived at the Bluff at daybreak. Eager bitch. While she and Maw festooned the grounds and prettied up the casket-planters with white and red blooms, I stalked the length of the porch from on high.

A strong hand pulled me inside. The door slammed behind me and I resumed my pacing in Esme and Carl's bedroom, all three stooges starting at me. Finally Jizz rolled a joint. He passed the doobie to me. I grabbed the roach-clip and took a hit.

"Need the White Rabbit?" Bubba asked.

Exhalin' O2 through little sips, I plunked onto the settee. "Nah, I'm good."

Carl inhaled the offshoots, getting high on contact.

"Where are the women?"

"Upstairs." Jasper dragged on the joint.

"Bella too?" I needed to make sure she'd showed.

"Man, you gotta ask?" Emmett came out of the bathroom, spraying Lysol in his wake.

_Chris'sakes._

"Yep." Carl leaned closer to the reefer smoke. "Got here at 7 am. Your girl's ready."

Nerves crackling through my veins, I peered into the mirror. I had on a tux, and the slim black tie felt strange against my throat. The regulation wife beater underneath the crisp white shirt made me feel a little better.

Jizz smashed the spliff into an ashtray. "Lookin' good, hot stuff."

Under his breath, Bubba hummed _Red Solo Cup_ while he drew pants up his meaty legs. He'd pressed the black trousers between his mattresses. Trading out his _I ain't sinnin', I'm grinnin' _t shirt for a black and white tuxedo-t, he bumped my shoulder as we fought for mirror time.

"Why haven't you popped the question yet?" I elbowed him in the ribs sending him against the wall.

Bubba grinned. "I ain't no chump."

_Just a chimpanzee in a monkey suit._

Jasper tapped his watch. "It's time."

My stomach rollercoasted. They marched me outside, down the steps, to the altar. Maw held a hankie in her hand and the side of my face in the other. "You do her proud, Eddie Cullen."

Of course. Bubba had gotten his way. He was officiating. He pulled out a set of index cards tucked inside a Barbara Cartland paperback.

On both side of the aisle, our friends and families crowded. The chairs were mismatched, the southern ladies wore hats. Vampires were at ease with the humans and then the organ struck a wedding march.

When Bella turned the corner and slipped under the gazebo, my knees gave out.

Jasperclasped my shoulder. "She's beautiful, man. You're a lucky sumbitch."

_I am._ Watching her, I believed it for the first time. My eyes burned against the vision of Bella walking down the aisle toward me. For me.

For the first time I understood what this all meant. I knew I had something in Bella that Jasper wanted, that Emmett needed, that Esme and Carl had found.

My heart walloped in my chest, or maybe it was my stomach diving down. All those inert organs leaped to life when Bella approached. She caught a tear on her fingertip, and I wanted to kiss them all away.

The ivory satin sheath, the voluminous veil, the heels . . . she could have come to me in cut-offs and a tanktop. But I didn't deny the punch to my gut with the vision she made.

_For the first tim__**e**_, I decided fate had done me right. Eternity hadn't damned me. Never-ending life meant I'd be with Bella forever.

I held out my hand, accepted Sheriff Swan's firm shake. I nodded solemnly at him as his pornstache twitched as if invested with emotion he struggled to wipe from his face. His standard issue pistol at his hip, his badge prominent on his cut-rate tan colored suit, he threatened, "You know I can still shoot you, sonny boy."

_Welcome to the family._

I didn't falter. "Yessir. And you know I'll do everything, every single day, to make your daughter happy."

_Maybe that's enough._

When Charlie placed Bella's palm in mine, I held it like a treasure. She kissed her daddy on the cheek and raised her chin, a river of tears falling from her dark eyes.

I swallowed and took a step up to Emmett, Bella beside me. I bent toward her. "I'd be cryin' too, darlin', if I could." My voice came out a little rough, a little shaky.

Her palm slipped up my forearm.

"Ready?" I asked, gathering her hand in mine, kissing her fingertips gently.

I watched as beneath the veil the soft fan of her eyelashes brushed her cheeks. "Yes, Eddie."

Facing one another, we linked hands. The crowd of vampires, Caleb from Mama's and a few of his less superstitious Gullah friends, the wolf pack, even Delilah from next door, who'd found a sitter for her brood, and L'isiana and Texas, who managed to curtail their neighbor-wars enough to attend . . .

They all shut their pieholes when Bubba began in a strong and solemn voice, no sign of the jughead in evidence. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the joining of Edward 'Eddie' Cullen and Isabella Marie Swan in the most sacred of all unions, marriage . . ."

In keeping with the theme, we'd opted for traditional vows, minus the 'obey shit' as Bella put it.

It felt like I'd waited my whole life for her, yet the ceremony passed in a blur of _I dos and I wills_. All I could focus on was the smile on Bella's lips, her mouth forming the words that would bind her to me forever. The sound of her voice, low and warm as liquid honey, and sometimes trembling through her vows.

After I committed myself to her and our rings were exchanged, I ran the pad of my thumb over her bottom lip through the veil, feeling her gasp.

We reached for each other at the same time. Her hands finding my shoulders, sliding up my throat, clasping my jaw. I lifted the veil and slowly kissed each salty wet tear before waiting a hairsbreadth from her mouth, reveling in this first moment as man and wife.

Our lips brushed once and twice before sliding together fiercely. I groaned at the moist strokes of her tongue coiling with mine, gripping her hair that fell loose down her back in a bounty of waves. Pulling Bella up in my arms, I swung her around, never once losing the passionate kiss that made me want to lift up her long dress and sink right into her.

When I finally set her down, her lips were swollen, her eyes shone as bright as I'd ever seen them. A final teardrop trailed down the curve of her cheek and when I kissed it away, I slid my lips over to touch her earlobe. "Hi, Mrs. Cullen."

Her beaming smile of pride pulled an uncontainable grin from me, and I leaned back to let loose a loud holler.

Everyone joined in, rushing the small platform with hugs and claps, loud shouts and more swearing than Maw would've usually allowed, but she was too overcome with her own bout of 'proud momma' preening to do much about it.

She tugged me down by my ears and kissed me soundly on the cheek while Carl slapped me on the back, a blow that would've broken a human male's scapula, meant merely as congratulations, 'course.

Giving up his preacher-man-moment, Bubba jumped up onto the lectern. Once the showboating buffoon had everyone's attention, he pulled a move straight from WWE. Going all Hulk Hogan on the tux coat, he ripped it apart at the shoulder seams like that shit was held together with Velcro. Pulling a PBR can from his pocket, he guzzled it in one and did a 100% pure Bubba move, crushing the empty can to his rock-solid forehead before lobbing it into the crowd.

"Let's do some damage, y'all!" He bellowed.

_Brain damage, maybe._

The reception took no time at all to get underway; the guests were as thick as bluebottles on a cow's ass. The two-story porch on Maw's house had been decorated in flashing black fairy lights. Didn't need to be a genius to figure out whose personal touch that had been. Music pumped from the speakers housed under the carport and long tables faced the creek, laden with a full spread of barbecue supplied by Rosie and Mama Brown's, junkfood galore for Carl, beer, and a candy dish of joints handrolled by Jasper.

It went without saying blood was on tap, warmed to a perfectly drinkable degree.

The centerpiece of the really fucking bizarre banquet was the cake. No less than four tiers, it was piped in black icing . . . with miniature crows made of fondant or some fucking crap on each level, their sharp beaks appearing to peck at the cake layers.

Flushed, warm, and gorgeous, Bella appeared beside me. "Alice ordered the cake."

"No shit." And I'd be having words with Little Miss Bonnie-no-Clyde later, after I searched her person for pickpocketed items.

An uproar caught my attention just before I reconsidered putting my fist through the cake first and the mischievous minx's face second. Spinning around I almost spat my mouthful of PBR out when I saw Seth, Ja-cub, and Sam playing hot potato with Mr. L'isiana. He was quickly turning red in the face, unable to believe a group of overgrown Cajun boys were tossing him around like a bag of boiled peanuts just because they all had the fiery bayou blood racing through them. Shapeshifting shitheads.

"Well," I murmured to Bella. "They definitely liven up the place."

The sound of her laugh pinged through my body, lighting up every sexual impulse until I felt like a livewire.

I was getting ready to haul her around the side of the house to see if I could get some relief for my tormented cock—hell, a quick trip down her throat would do me good—when goddamn 'Speeches!' was announced.

Snagging two glasses of champagne for Bella—I didn't want her to go dry—and another beer for me with a blood chaser, I guided her to the head table. When she took her seat, I pushed it in, bending to lick the long line of her neck before biting her gently.

"Eddie!"

"Mmm."

"Speeches?" She gave a small whimper after I nipped down the opposite side of her neck, ending at the top hills of her breasts pushed _just-so_ above the bodice so all it would take was one press of my thumbs to watch her nipples topple out.

"They can give speeches, darlin', I'm gonna sit here and suck on your peaches."

"Edward Anthony Masen Cullen, git your face out of Bella's décolletage and _kindly_ show some fuckin' respect for this sacred occasion." Esme's shrill tone cut right through my happy face-planting moment.

I eased back, acting relaxed. Laying one proprietary arm across Bella's bare shoulders, I aimed a loose grin at Maw and winked. I chuckled when she looked flustered for a moment, not having been on the receiving end of my charm before.

Of special note, while I sat beside my girl and fiddled with her hair, were Maw's, Rosie's, and Chuckles speeches, which they kept brief. _Fuckin' thankfully._

M'Esme held up a goblet in our direction in one hand and clutched Carl's fingers with the other. "The South will rise again!"

_No shit. The Pavlov is already well and truly up._

Rosie stood and gave her congratulations as Bella's BFF. "I tried to keep you away from that scoundrel, girl, but you just ain't got the smarts you were born with."

I looked askance at Bella who was smothering a laugh behind her hand. _Laugh now darlin', you'll be screamin' in ecstasy later._

"Howsoever, if you were gonna land a vamp, I'm glad it was Eddie. He'll fight to the end for you, sex you up, and keep you cool on our hot southern nights!"

Curling against my chest, Bella hid her grin in my neck. With her resting against me, I took the opportunity to caress the warm skin of her back, on fire with the need to get as close to her as possible.

Sheriff Hardass followed Rosie. He started and stopped a few times, which meant Bella sprung a leak in the waterworks again, but I held her through it all. He called out in a gruff voice, "My baby girl. A father hopes for this day and dreads it at the same time. Especially when she's hookin' up with a no-good Cainhoy boy."

"Daddy!"

"Let me finish. I had my ideas about Eddie here, then I got clued in about y'all Cullens. What I've observed made me rethink some things." His straight and arrow brown gaze zoomed in on me. "I guess Eddie gives you what you need. He might break a few laws—that I'd just as soon not know about-and go about things the wrong way, but I'm not worried when I know you're with him. That's all a father wants."

"_Daddy_!" Bella lifted her glass to him, smiling widely.

Charlie drained his beer, caught another from Bubba, and headed for a chair, meeting Leah on the way. She swayed against him before she found her footing, the Alpha Bitch clearly a little juiced up. She wasn't on the docket for speeches, but that wasn't about to stop her.

_Here we go._

"Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Won't you go to beddie with me? You soooo pretty. And sparkly, I've heard about Sparky the sparkly cock!" She hiccupped.

I glared at Bella. _Sparky the sparkly cock?_ I bit out, "I sweat. It ain't friggin' glitter-dust on my dick, babe."

"I never called your cock Sparky, baby, I swear it," Bella hissed back.

Leah reeled away from the table on her heels and towed herself back by one hand clawing across the surface in front of her. "Sparky, sparkly, s'pretty. You ask 'im 'bout a threesome yet, Belllls?" She slurred.

_Okay, that one? I'll tuck away for jag-off material._

To everyone else I said, "All right! I'm callin' the dog catchers."

"Time for gifts!" Maw shouted over me.

As I stood to escort Bella to the swag pile, the gamine gremlin sidled up to me.

"Go on, darlin', I'll catch up." I said to Bella. The half-sized hustler had that dazed and confused look about her. Either that or she was as skunk-drunk as Leah.

She'd replaced her tattered black lace parasol with a new-old tattered black lace hat that sat at an angle on her short, raven black locks. Arms in long gloves, minus the fingers, cinched into a white dress that fell to her knees, she was an animated vision of the fucking cake she'd ordered.

Soon as Bella was outta earshot, she said, "I've seen the future,"—_not this crap again_—"and you're going to live a long,"—_no shit, Miss Cleo_—"happy life with Bella."

With that, she took her broomstick and cackled off to find Jasper. Maybe she was sincere, or maybe she'd had too much beer . . . whatever. I shrugged, dragged both hands through my hair and followed Bella's trail.

She was inspecting a box.

"Who's it from?" I asked.

"Card says Caius."

I glared at the offering. "Chuck it."

Alice's broomstick must've boomeranged her right back to me. She turned up like a bad penny at my side. "What if it's the Hope Diamond?" Dollar bill signs all but spun in her irises.

"I don't need another friggin' gewgaw, and I don't need no emblem of hope, not when I've got Bella right here."

I lifted a package wrapped in newspaper_,_ _The Times-Picayune,_standard top and center. I didn't rattle it. I dropped it on the ground. _Fuckin' RJ and JR_.I hoped to Christ it wasn't one of their fingers, toes, or—I shuddered—imaging the worst. They'd sent back their RSVP last week, unable to make it to our nuptials _'_cause they were working the zombie thing, landing parts—literally—as extras on a pilot for something called _The Walking Dead._ Sounded about right.

Bella broke into a prettily wrapped parcel overflowing with ribbons. The box big and unwieldy, I held it open while she ripped the top off. Digging under layers of tissue paper, she carefully gathered the contents in her arms, keeping it off the grass.

"Clear a table." She ordered.

Five pairs of hands on deck made short work of making a clean space for the gift Bella unfolded on the table. It was a patchwork quilt. Each pane was hand-stitched with . . . two figures in Kama Sutra positions.

Bubba knocked his elbow into my ribs. "In case y'all run out of ideas, seein' as how y'all are always fuckin'. Except these past few weeks, right, Eddie?" He jeered.

_As if I need a reminder._

My hand wandered over the couples screwing in all possible positions. My gaze tightened on the pair and I noticed a few similarities that made me smile. The female looked suspiciously like Bella and the dude definitely had my hair.

"Emmett!" Bella exclaimed, hugging him.

"Emmett." I gave him a skullrub. The softhearted fool had probably spent all his sleepless nights since our announcement making this. And he wasn't even half as queer as the EOFer.

Letting him out of the headlock, I sipped on Bella's lips and rocked against her hips. "Let's cut a rug."

The dance floor was packed with bodies, shining with hot lights, and loud with music. I stripped off my jacket, lost the tie, and pulled the suit shirt from my trousers. Soon as the buttons were undone, I shrugged it off my shoulders. In a white wifebeater and my black pants, I pulled Bella to me.

Flashes of light glinted off the wedding band on my finger when my hand cruised up Bella's side. She stared at my shoulders, my chest, winding her way languorously up to my mouth.

The look in her eyes was a searing kiss to my soul.

"You do wanna dance with me, right?"

Her gaze leapt to my eyes. "Yes."

The song slowed into a bittersweet tune of love found, lost, and gained. And I could do this all night.

Our turn around the dance floor wouldn't win no prizes, but it didn't matter one bit. Bella cuddled against me and I matched the sinuous motions of her hips, dragging her to me, my hands close to her bottom.

"I love you," she murmured.

My cheek against hers, I felt the drum of her heartbeat. Between my thighs, her leg slid, sending a fresh flash of _fuck-now_ to my groin.

But I shook it down. A kiss, a hard fast fuck . . . neither of those things meant as much as holding her through this first dance of desire.

We stayed out there for a long time, lingering in the feel of each other. The moon spun above, its pale rays hitting her shimmering dress, lighting it with drenched fire.

Eventually, night closing in, the reception got a little rowdy. Rock music blared and we broke apart. Rosie claimed Bella and I claimed a stool.

Our wedding shindig started getting hairy, and not just because of the foolish loup-garu. Folding chairs were broken, and Maw started having a conniption fit. Someone accused Alice of stealing, _que cera_.

The bonfire blazed out of control, which could be dangerous considering three quarters of us were highly flammable.

I strutted up to Bella and grabbed her hand and we made a break for it.

_~~ll~~_

After playing a round of chicken with the tourists downtown, Bella pretending to disapprove but letting a laugh slip out now and then—especially when I bumrushed Mike Newton then sideswiped his fuckin' Jeep Liberty—I took us over the bridges onto James Island and kept the Sunday Best truck, 'course.

Driving contentedly, one wrist over the wheel, one arm over Bella so she snuggled against my side, we wound through the live oaks arching over the narrow roads the farther we got into the country. They dripped with Spanish moss and were covered with feathery resurrection ferns, the massive trees shot through with shards of moonlight. Everything black, white, and gray and pristine.

We sped through the gates of the coastal enclave, and I followed the road down a mile or so until the salty smell of the ocean swept in through the open windows of the truck, the Atlantic spreading out before us. I turned into a long drive and stopped in front of a stone and timber house made up mostly of enormous windows reflecting the ocean's surf back to us.

"Kiawah, Eddie?" Bella breathed when I helped her out of the truck.

I ducked my head. "Yeah."

"We made love for the first time here, at The Sanctuary."

Lifting her hand, I kissed along her palm to her wrist where her pulse zinged. "Not somethin' I'll ever forget, babe. It was just after you decided it was okay I'm a vampire."

Her fingers ruffled through my hair as she pulled my face to hers. "You chose to honeymoon on Kiawah _because_ it's the first place we made love?"

Grabbing a quick kiss, I smiled against her lips. "Yeah."

I scooped Bella up in my arms and walked toward the house. Up the steps and across the wide porch, I carried my precious cargo. Her arms linked around my neck, her cheek pressed against my shoulder. Crossing the threshold with her in my arms, euphoria flew through me, something I'd never experienced before.

I set her down, crushing her to me, claiming her mouth and dragging across her lips with my tongue.

"Eddie!" She gasped when I broke away. "You can't afford this."

I shuffled my feet, glancing over my shoulder at the grand surrounds, the luxurious furnishings, the massive house that faced the sea. "Yeah, I can."

"I knew you were loaded, but I didn't think . . . Hang on, then why are we living in a trailer up in Cainhoy?"

"Don't know, darlin'. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, it's just who I am." I frowned.

Suddenly her hands cupped my face. "Yeah, it is." She pressed up into me, landing a sweet kiss that did nothing to bank the fire inside me. "You're a good man, Eddie Cullen." She smoothed my dress shirt down and swept her lips against my throat, humming happily.

"And you're a good woman, Bella Cullen." A sense of smug pride made me smirk down at her.

She stepped away from me and I made a fast grab for her, but she quickened her pace across the heart of pine floor. I stood with my fists on my hips, watching her retreat with a laugh, tossing her hair and a challenging smile over her shoulder. "Forget I'm as fast as you now, Eddie?"

"Somethin' like that," I mumbled.

Her laughter continued to tinkle. "C'mon, baby." She held out her hand.

_Finally gonna get some._

Un-fuckin'-fortunately, I hadn't figured on the possibility she'd want a tour of the place while my hard-on was ready to _tear_ outta my pants. I trailed awkwardly after her, my cock making walking difficult, but it was worth it to watch the delight and joy spreading across her face.

Although next time I was gonna rent a one room shack in the boondocks so she'd have nothing to look at but me.

At the top of the house at the end of a hall, after what felt like far too frigging long a trek, we made it to the bedroom.

I opened the door and stepped inside. "C'mere."

I watched Bella's heartbeat flutter in the pulse at the base of her neck, a neck I was gonna get my teeth into soon. The room was lit only by moonlight streaming through another long bank of windows, and it was empty of all pretentious bullshit like soft music, rose petals, or flickering candles. I had a 'no open-flames' policy. All that mattered was me, Bella, and the bed.

The floor'd work too.

As soon as she slipped into my arms, I found the buttons at the back of her dress. She hadn't changed before we left the bluff earlier and now I was thrilled. I relished the honor of taking her out of her wedding gown. Slowly. Seductively. Seemed she was thinking along similar lines because Bella worked the jacket from my arms while I fingered each tiny button from its fabric loop down the curve of her back.

The bodice swooped forward, my shirt was peeled from my shoulders. I cupped her breast within the gown, thumbing across her nipple. Every measured touch brought a gradual reveal of skin. Flesh bare for lips and tongues and fingers. The heart-shape of her ass fitting my hands after the last of her lingerie—buttery silky barely there scraps—flittered away to the floor. The tips of her tits drawn out by my tongue and teeth. My chest and abs covered in jolting hot kisses, her fingernails digging into the backs of my thighs, scratching upward to my ass.

Clothing shed, we tangled together on the bed. Sleek kisses and the wet glide of my fingers into her soft pussy made the air sizzle with her moans. Wanting more, needing closer. Pulling herself down my body, Bella pumped me in her hand and cupped my sacs in her palm. I braced on my elbows, not blinking, trying my damnedest not to move, watching every stroke as her gaze focused on the straining flesh she smoothed up and down in her fist.

With a sly grin, she kept me torturously erect, on the verge of release. "Wanna come all over me, don't you?"

_That's the idea._ "And in you, your mouth, your cunt, I want my come all over your body, wanna see your tits covered in it."

She placed her lips above the swollen head of my cock and dangled her tongue around and around the most sensitive tissue until I jerked in place, grunting and cursing. One quick deep plunge and I was buried down her throat, shouting as I punched the mattress. She came off me just as quickly, sending my body into an overload of arousal.

"On your back," I growled.

She flipped over and I prowled up her, lapping down deep with her thighs pressed wide apart until she shivered all over. I sucked her belly button and nibbled the plump crests of her tits and moved up to her lips, driving my tongue forcefully inside. I swallowed her scream and drank it down then skimmed to her neck. My teeth pierced her quickly. She came with my fingers curled inside her, her blood flowing inside me. Drinking slowly, reeling from her heady taste, I settled between her legs.

Cleaning her wound, I grunted when her slick labia enfolded my cock. Wild with the taste of her on my tongue, the feel of her on my dick, I held her down and thrust into her. I kept Bella pinned under me, screwing her, making the headboard bounce off the wall with each fierce thrust. The bedding got rucked up under us as I fucked her with all my being until I had to bite her again, clamping into the soft round flesh of her tit. She scratched all down my back, marking me too. A taste of lover's blood between us.

I gasped away from her, pressing my thumb over the mark on her breast while she looked up with sex-dazed eyes to dare me. "Come on me then."

Angling my hips for the deepest impact, I leaned in and conjured another climax from her, laughing darkly as her cunt clamped around me in rhythmic pulses. She threw her hands to my thighs, my ass, grabbed onto my hair, trying to keep me on her, in her as I backed away. Cock in my fist, soaked from her desire, I fired off at her pussy and tits, her mouth.

I came all over her body, shivering from head to toe from the most intense orgasm I'd ever experienced.

"Jesus. Are you marking your territory?" She asked, running her fingers through the shiny patterns I'd made on her pale skin.

I lowered over her, bracing on one arm, and twirled the wedding band on her finger. "Already did. This was just for good measure."

My huge thighs bounding hers, my seed a hot warm mess between us, I watched, mesmerized, as she drew my fingers through the ribbons drizzled over her breast. She brought them to her mouth, sucked my fingers inside, licked them clean.

"You like it?" My voice was pure gravel. My cock already firm and ready, pressing into her hip.

"I want more." Nimbly hauling me down, Bella guided me inch by aching inch back into her wet heat.

This time we barely moved. Pressed completely together from lips to chests to hips and legs, we rocked in dance of flesh, and desire, and love. Bodies tight, hands linked, we met and moved through long smooth strokes, a wave of motion and emotion. Wrapped around each other, time could've slowed, time could've stopped. Our orgasms washed over us with gasps and groans and intimate whispers. It felt like we were making love for the first time, for infinity.

We remained locked in that luscious embrace until sweat made us damp and the sharp scent of come filled the air, and Bella's hair lay tangled and wild on my shoulders and across my chest.

I stayed inside her, even after coming several more times, still hard. She fell asleep draped over me, and I fought not to squeeze her tighter.

There never needed to be more than this. Bella, beside me. Mine and married. Her heart still beating beneath my hand even though I'd turned her. The worry that she'd die, that she'd leave me, that I wasn't ever gonna be good enough for this sassafras woman ebbed like the tide pulling away from the shore.

My chest filled with pride. With hope. With love. I didn't have to long for a life outta my reaches anymore.

I curled around Bella, shifting her to her side. My legs against hers, my chest to her back. I slipped a hand between her breasts, listening to the sleepy slough of her soft breaths.

I kissed her neck and knew I'd get up with her in the morning and each morning after that. And she'd give me shit, screw me hard, and probably tax my patience. I looked forward to every single second of eternity for the first time in my long life.

"I love you, darlin'." I whispered.

~~The End~~

Remember, I'm on Facebook! Come connect, my page or profile—I'm always hiding out there. And books! In addition to _Sugar Daddy,_ I have a slash dystopian romance series coming August 6th from Grand Central Publishing—_In His Command_. This isn't really the end, just a new beginning.

xoxo, Rie

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